Hi,

Im having bubbletrouble with my 120GB maxtor 6y120l0 hard disk. I simply cannot boot windows.
If my english is poor(and it probably is), i hope you will pardone me

Here's the story, everything started..

around 2 weeks ago, i have installed suse 9.1 on my second slave hd(hdb)(an old 6GB fireball).
Usually I put LiLo on a floppy, leaving windows loader in peace(have already had many problems with damned windows bootloader), but
this time i forgot, putting lilo on hda, where my winsos stands(hda1->win installation, 20GB; hda2->programs 100GB).
Few hours after installation, i had to "uninstall" suse, because i had some problems with 'make' command(hihihi).
During reinstallation, i put lilo on my floppy disk.

When i tried loading winsos, i got just a blank black screen, where nothing was movingon.

I thougt it was winsos mbr(as it probably was). So I booted with winXP, gone into repair console, selected win installation(there was only one), checked boot, and finally ran 'fixmbr'. Win told me "This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record. FIXMBR may damage your partition tables if you proceed. This could cause all the partitions on the current hard disk to become inaccessible. If you are not having problems accessing your drive, do not continue. Are you sure you want to write a new MBR? ", and in responce i typed yes, fixit!.
After fix, i 'fixboot'ed and 'bootcfg /rebuild'ed. That was enough, as i know, to have things working fine.
But when i tried booting windows again, i got the same blank black screen, with few strange colored symbols blinking...

So I checked hda from linux, finding out that my data was ok.
Retried to fixmbr, but same thing happend.

Put my secondpc scsi windows2k hd into pc, to check data from windows(had a read only in linux). All my data and 2 partitions where still there, hard drive was reading and writing well, everything was ok, except for partition magic 8, which told me that it was damaged.
I tried with maxtor disk-check utility(powermax) and i was told that my hd was fine. No errors..
As i had enough GBytes to backup, i backuped my data, ready for format.

Because partition magic was the only one giving me problems, i decided to format using it's format utility. As i started formatting, i get an error(soory, but i dont remember what error..nothing that had a sense).
Partition magic was unable to format, so i tried using maxtor's maxblast 3. It formatted my Gigs fine, creating a unique 120Gb partition.

Partition magic worked fine with hd after format, so i decided to try reinstalling winsosxp.

Xpcd boot, ntfs fast format, and needed win-files copy, reboot, normal xp installation procedure.

Unfortunatly, after rebooting, it gave me: "Errror loading OS, Press CTRL+ALT+CANC to reboot".

While crying, i tried to start hd in LBA mode, but i just got nothing(blank screen).
Tried fixmbr procedure again, but nothing..Tried installing win2k, but nothing. Tried to make 2 partitions and install winxp on the second partition, but nothing. Tried to pray, but nothing(as usual )...
Disk is working really fine, it simply cannot boot...Must be something very stupid..but i dont know what

I love windows so much(JOKE!)...please, help me.. Any advice welcome, ill try whatever your brain computes as useful..

Ah, also tried to clear cmos!, but nothing..65

I hope it's not too late (that you repair attempts did not mess the system up ), but did you try the suggestions of SuSE? I know, you already tried LBA mode, but maybe a repair would help:

http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html

You could also try to use qparted from a KNOPPIX CD to repartition your HDD.

fixmbr doesn't help in your case, since it does not affect the partition table, which is defect after the SuSE installation. It simply deletes the MBR (which AFAIK does not contain the partition table).

Good luck!

Well, thanks for useful URL. You have been really fast, thank you


ok, update:

What i have done is reinstalling suse on my hda second partition. After installation i tried loading winxp and i got the

root (hd 0,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader +1

error. Wow! finnaly something sensed

After watching the error , i have followed suse instructions(the only "different" thing i have done is putting on floppy file called parted.iso.gz, while they say i have to put parted.img.gz, but they are same size files, just saved differently), used fixpart=1, and got...

"The following dialog for repairing the partition table displays your hard disk (usually /dev/hda) and the status of the partition table ( broken ). Select the hard disk and click "OK" to repair the partition table. "

But the real dialog i got was

"The following dialog for repairing the partition table displays your hard disk (usually /dev/hda) and the status of the partition table ( OK ). Select the hard disk and click "OK" to watch a window saying everything is ok and you have nothing to repair. "

Obviously

root (hd 0,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader +1

is still there

This is strange, although I've heard several similar reports meanwhile. Without solutions, however.

I recognized one issue: does it really say root (hd 0,0) or (hd0,0)? There should be no space!

And are you sure that writing the iso file (which is for CD) on a floppy will result in something functional? I have no idea, just asking

You could also check under Linux, if cfdisk (another version of fdisk) shows the flag NC on your partition (this indicates it is still broken).

On the other hand: what happens if you try to install XP again? I mean, grub cannot load something that isn't there.

Sorry no more ideas. Try repartitioning with knoppix!

Well, it's hd0,0 (copy-paste mistake)

Tried writing img version on floppy, nothing is changed, same partition ok window.

With cfdisk everything seems to be ok.

Xp is already installed..anyway i get the same error hd1,0, when i try loading my win2k installation.

btw, i toook a loook (booot)(gooogle)(rooot) to (put a www) vvv.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=243931 , and a lot of people have not fixed it yet...

i'll try repartitioning.

Thanks for your help, i hope someone will fix it. In the meantime ill cry


This "smile" is so funny :

Oh, i forgot..