It will be on the windows boot disk if you made one, or else it will be on the windows install cd's.

In researching this, I found an instance of someone emphasizing running fdisk from the floppy. I'm scratching my head wondering if that makes a difference. Willing to experiment? Getting back to what you have now is as easy as booting Red Hat from a floppy and issuing /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda.

The experiment: In Windows, make a boot floppy (can Win98 do this by formatting it and checking the "Add System File" box?) and copy fdisk.exe to it. Boot the floppy to a DOS prompt and try fdisk /mbr again.

Whatcha think?

Hello again -

You do not have an install CD for Windows? If you had you could have logged on to the recovery console and chose repair which would take you to a DOS prompt where you can type the command: fixmbr
After I did fdisk /mbr - I was getting Operating System not found. But the fixmbr did not work - I then got NTLDR not found - I gave up and installed XP again (which took an hour). But it took much longer to get my XP configured to what it was previously. I am now trying to get up my courage to run grub-install /dev/hda once more.

But sorry - I do not know how I can help

I'm having the smae problem of not being able to access windows. everything was working fine as a dual boot system, until I ran the auto update in gnome. from then on if I tried running window from Grub, it wouldn't work. I booted from a windows floppy and tried to access the C: drive and got an invalid media error. I double checked that the windows partition was the active partition using fdisk, then I ran fdisk /mbr and rebooted and I get the error message "missing operating system". What now? I vaguely remember there being a way to copy the system files onto the C: drive without having to reformat that drive, there is still data on there I want/need.

Dave

I'm experimenting (I have a system with Win98--actually two) with the options you are talking about and I want to try WindowsBBS to see if they have any ideas.

Thackerd, I agree with you that if we're just missing the operating system, there is a non-destructive way to restore it. Keep in mind, that even if you have to reinstall Windows, that doesn't delete your data, so you can relax a little bit about that.

I think the situations are a little different. TAH can boot Windows through Grub without getting an error; you get the error with both boot loaders.

Anyway, our dilema is that any pre-Win2K fdisk.exe should have fixed this problem with fdisk /mbr. In both of your cases, it didn't. Our much-touted fail safe repair failed. Here are the options I would suggest we pursue:

1. Look for what went wrong with fdisk. Is it as simple as you can't run it on the drive you booted from (you have to boot from a:\ to fix c:\)? I don't know, but I'd like to look at exactly what both of you did--how you booted the computer, where you executed fdisk from, what version of fdisk are you running, etc. Also, are you running Win98 or Win98SE?

2. Is there a Win98 equivalent to NT's fixmbr & fixboot commands. To fix this problem in NT, we'd put in the Install CD, boot to Rescue console and run those two commands. Unlike fdisk /mbr, which is an undocumented fix, this one is documented on the Microsoft tech pages. Can we find a tech page that discusses this and has a part the says, "However, if you are using Windows 98, do this . . .?" Can we find the Win98 versions of fixmbr & fixboot. It would help if both of you would do a search for fix* on your Windows systems.

3. What is the best way to restore your .sys files to your root system? Again, the Microsoft tech pages talked about formatting a floppy and putting the system files on it, then copying them to c:\. Dave do you have a boot disk or Win98 CD? If we start heading down this path, you're going to need one or the other.

Please take some time and fill in what you can from above and then we'll start searching the internet.

My advice to anybody with this problem at the moment is that if you have a bootable linux partition you should mount the windows partition and back up any critical data ASAP.

Also - is anyone here having the same problems on systems with lilo as the bootloader?

I will try to provide some answers to the questions above this evening if I can find the time. I apologize for the delay, but Linux is only at home and work has been keeping me away since the weekend.

Thank you Deadbug, et al for your help!

Kind regards,
TAH

Deadbug, I am willing to experiment and will run what you suggest this evening--I hope. I'm not afeared! I have been to hell and back and I remember the way.

1) I booted from floppy and fdisked from their to, can access anything on the C: drive

2) Will do a fix* search tonight

3) I have a Windows boot disk and CD. FYI I boot from disk and tried "copy command.com c:" and it wouldn't

----------------------
How do I mount the windos partition to make back up of files, once that's done we can play all we want.

I haven't tried lilo yet, but based on the fact that with out a boot loader it still won't boot the windows partition, so I figured the problem wasn't the boot loader.

Dave

just to be sure, windows is on the first partition, right? or have you done something funky with it?

Abel brings up a good point.

Tom, you used Partition Magic to make room for Linux. What did you do? Also, you mentioned that you don't have the Install CD because didn't ship that way--any chance we're dealing with a Dell computer?

Dave, any of this apply to you?

The notion that hit me was the hidden partition that many manufacturers put at the front of a computer drive. It's purpose is for reinstalling the OS and it is only about 30 MB (1/3 of a small Zip disk). So that Windows can be installed on the first partition, this little one is hidden and the Windows (second) partition is set active as C:\.

If something were to unhide the first partition, the BIOS would call it C:\ and try to go there to load something that wasn't there: Missing Operating System.

Tell me how far off track I am

Hidden partition.... you mean like the old Compaq partition at the end of the drive. They were visible thru fdisk as type 'other'.

As far as I know, windows _really_ wants to be the forst partition and my guess would be that it would choke on the hirst one.

Partition magic - that may be one of the problems and potentially a sulution. Can the machine be booted from PM?

I used fips to split the windows partition, then during the installation I used disk druid (it wouldn't let me automatic) currently
dev/hda1 is ext3 102MB
dev/hda3 is swap 1028MB
dev/hda4 is extended
dev/hda5 is ext3 18873 MB
dev/hda2 is Win95 FAT32

all that said I seem to remember there being another really small partition (the 2 MB, added onto the 100MB boot partition) that during creatig and deleting Linux partions isn't there. But that doesn't explain why the dual boot worked until I autoupgraded (Kernel included) {which by the way gave me 4 options to boot from in Grub (the old kernel, the new kernel, the new kernal w/ debug and windows, which stopped working at that point. Granted there may have been something I did before that that didn't manifest itself till I tried to boot into windows to get the IRQ for the sound card?

So maybe somehow there really was some 2MB partition on the hda and it got deleted, and that was where windows was "booting" from?

Dave

ps, hda5 is nested on hda4

Deadbug, et al,

There has been so much in this thread and I have been able to attend to this issue only sporadically since the work week began. I must say, I am having some trouble getting my head around all of this, but...

The way I got back to the dual boot system is I re-installed Linux and let the partitions get built by the install.

I do now have a windows boot disk. (Basically, the only problem I have with Windows right now is--because I began to run the restoration CD at one point last weekend--when it boots it tells me to insert the Windows OS CD. I hit F10 to exit the restoration and I am back to the Windows as always.

I am willing to try whatever the consensus is here in an effort to drop Linux and re-dedicate this p.o.s. to Windows--how appropriate. (lol) I now have a degree of confidence that I can get back to this point if an experiment fails. If not, I'll advertise "Electronic boat anchor for sale." (let's hope it doesn't come to that.)

Kind regards to you all and I apologize again for having not been able to dedicate more time to this of late. It is still an issue here so please do not think that I have given up.

TAH