Dual Boot! I cant' boot Windows

christodoulos77 · 09-30-2006, 01:12 PM

I have just install Fedora Core 5 and then I realised that I lost Windows partition. How can i fix this problem?

Thanks

JiYu · 09-30-2006, 01:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by christodoulos77

I have just install Fedora Core 5 and then I realised that I lost Windows partition. How can i fix this problem?

Thanks

You lost the partition or have no grub entry to boot windows? What say "fdisk -l"?

lavluda · 09-30-2006, 01:17 PM

check the output fdisk -l as root, if the partation really broken.

christodoulos77 · 09-30-2006, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lavluda

check the output fdisk -l as root, if the partation really broken.

This is what I get with fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120060444672 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14596 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2465 14596 97450258+ 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 14 2464 19687657+ 8e Linux LVM

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 19456 156280288+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/dm-0: 19.0 GB, 19058917376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2317 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 1040 MB, 1040187392 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 126 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

btmiller · 09-30-2006, 01:44 PM

Looks like /dev/sdb1 is your missing Windows partition. You should have an entry in your /boot/grub/menu.lst that looks something like this

Code:

title Windows
   root (hd1,0)
   chainloader +1

You can add it in if it's not there. This will hopefully tell GRUB how to boot your Windows install.

christodoulos77 · 09-30-2006, 02:11 PM

/boot/grub/menu.lst

Code:

title Other
	rootnoverify (hd1,0)
	chainloader +1

Should I change "rootnoverify" with "root" ?

btmiller · 09-30-2006, 02:15 PM

It should work with rootnoverify. If it does not, post the error you get when trying to boot this entry.

christodoulos77 · 09-30-2006, 02:25 PM

This is what I get when I'm tring to boot Windows

Code:

Booting 'Other'

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

btmiller · 09-30-2006, 03:25 PM

So it hangs at that point? Can you still boot Windows using a boot disk? If not, there might be some problem with the partition boot section. What versions of Windows do you have? I recall reading that some older Windows version won't boot off of a secondary hard drive (I'm not sure, though, as I don't use Windows much).

digital8doug · 09-30-2006, 04:15 PM

On which & Where on the 2 HDD avail did you think have M$ Windoz, Is it XP SP2 w/ last WinUpdates? I wonder results if you did as U asked in 15:11 post. IMHO Seems to work better if the Linux BL is installed to its own partition vs MBR when DB XP & Linux distros.
Try Recovery option w/ Win CD. When that failed I still had good luck with GAG46 aka Graphical Boot Manager. A LQ Search in success has all the info. GL d8d

Hailey's_Comet · 09-30-2006, 10:10 PM

you need to find a bootable win install disk for your system...

boot to the disk and enter a recovery prompt/console. then type 'help' and look for something similar to 'fixboot', then type that. I had that problem with win2k after adjusting my partitions.

christodoulos77 · 10-01-2006, 06:20 AM

I have already try "fixboot" but I lost also Linux. The Windows recover prompt was G:\ Then I boot again with Windows recover and my prompt was F:\ and I "fixboot" F:\ & C:\
I can boot in Linux now again but not in Windows. I still have the same problem. I have WIndows XP SP2

christodoulos77 · 10-01-2006, 12:50 PM

So? I lost Windows? ? ?
Thats all?
Any sudjestions?

Help me!

btmiller · 10-01-2006, 11:48 PM

Let's try and figure out if your Windows partition is still intact. Follow these instructions to get NTFS support on Fedora (you can ignore the part about modifying /etc/fstab). Then try (as root):

mkdir -p /mnt/windows
mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/sdb1 /mnt/windows

Does this work? Can you see your Windows files under /mnt/windows? If so, then at least we know your data is OK and maybe you can copy it off and try reinstalling if we absolutely can't get this working. If not, then it looks like Windows might, unfortunately be totally hosed. Note in the above I mounted the Windows partition read-only since from what I understand writing to NTFS might be somewhat risky.

Before trying this though, you mightwant to see if any of your rescue disks can "see" Windows. Also, you may find it useful to download and boot System Rescue CD. I've never used it much, but it should be able to detect your NTFS Windows partition and read the files on it if it's still intact.

Do you remember how you did the install? Did you ask the partitioner in the Fedora installer to do anything other to format your Linux partitions on sda?

Good luck! I hope this is of some help...

christodoulos77 · 10-02-2006, 01:05 AM

Before I install Linux I run Partition Magic from Winows.
"Install another OS"
I choose Linux with about 19GB space and a swap.
The only think that may whent wrong is that Partition Mgig set my Linux partition "active" to intsall Linux imidiate (when I was going to reboot). But I did it at a later time.
Is this a reason to have this problem.