LinuxQuestions.org - Fedora 3/winXP corrupted partition tables

Soo.. I decided to install Fedora the other night and OOooooh mumma am I having fun. Dual boot with Winxp, same drive, XP uses 2 partitions (one boot, one OS).

The first attempt went reasonably well up to the part where DD wouldn't let me create a swap, I had run out of primary partions and there was no extended partition to create a logical drive in (if DD even allows that??) so I got the thing going with no swap, and it was horribly slow. I figured it was the swap blunder, and started over. (In fact it was not the swap blunder, but some network issues I am pursuing elsewhere that may or may not include issues with IPV6 and tcp windows scaling etc).

The second attempt I got into XP and pulled out partition magic 8. I had an unused 50MB /boot for linux, a C: boot for windows (100MB), a 500MB unused SWAP for linux, an 8gig or so / for linux, and a 40gig or so windows OS partition. All was well, I blew away the partitions I did create with linux, did some resizing and came up with:

C: windows boot, big logical with a D: windows OS and room for a linux swap and /).

Back into linux.. created the 2 linux partitions, installed grub on the / partition, copied my linux.img over to windows and set up boot.ini for the bootloader (as per instructions on several pages), booted up linux and shazam.. no problemo. Things still dog slow (see earlier mention of unrelated network problems). Ok.. so far so good, but due to the wierdness I have to boot into windows to surf around looking for fixes.

Decided to run partition magic to see my handiwork and it said it was invalid HOLY MOLY here's what it showed in windows disk management:

http://members.shaw.ca/mr.murphy/PM8first1.jpg

Code:

===========================================================================================================

Partition Information for Disk 1:    58,643.5 Megabytes

Volume        PartType    Status    Size MB    PartSect  #  StartSect  TotalSects

===========================================================================================================

C:            NTFS        Pri,Boot    329.4          0  0          63    674,667

              ExtendedX  Pri      58,314.1          0  1    674,730 119,427,210

              EPBR        Log          0.0        None --    674,730          63

              EPBR        Log      9,154.2    674,730  0    674,731  18,747,854 

Warning #113: EPBR partition starting at 674731 overlaps previous EPBR partition.                                        

              Linux Ext3  Log      9,154.2    674,731  0    674,856  18,747,729

Info: Logical starting at 674856 is not one head away from EPBR.

              EPBR        Log        509.9    674,731  1  19,422,585  1,044,225

*:SWAPSPACE2  Linux Swap  Log        509.8  19,422,585  0  19,422,648  1,044,162

              Unallocated Log          7.8        None --  20,466,810      16,065

Error #113: Primary partition starting at 20482938 overlaps previous partition.

D:            NTFS        Pri      48,642.1          0  2  20,482,938  99,619,002

Yikes.. it offered to resize automaticall and I decided to let it try, it now came up as INVALID. But disk management now showed:

http://members.shaw.ca/mr.murphy/PM8first2.jpg

Code:

===========================================================================================================

Partition Information for Disk 1:    58,643.5 Megabytes

Volume        PartType    Status    Size MB    PartSect  #  StartSect  TotalSects

===========================================================================================================

C:            NTFS        Pri,Boot    329.4          0  0          63    674,667

              ExtendedX  Pri      9,672.0          0  1    674,730  19,808,208

              EPBR        Log          0.0        None --    674,730          63

Warning #113: EPBR partition starting at 674731 overlaps previous EPBR partition.

              EPBR        Log      9,154.2    674,730  1    674,731  18,747,854 

Info: Logical starting at 674856 is not one head away from EPBR.

              Linux Ext3  Log      9,154.2    674,731  0    674,856  18,747,729 

              EPBR        Log        509.9    674,731  1  19,422,585  1,044,225

*:SWAPSPACE2  Linux Swap  Log        509.8  19,422,585  0  19,422,648  1,044,162

              Unallocated Log          7.8        None --  20,466,810      16,065

D:            NTFS        Pri      48,642.1          0  2  20,482,938  99,619,002

Hey not shabby, much closer to what I thought should be there. I ran partition magic with an 'ignore partition errors' flag /IPE and it currently shows (although it considers this invalid):

http://members.shaw.ca/mr.murphy/PM8second.jpg

Despite all this manipulation it still boots both OS's fine from the windows bootloader. I am at a loss as to how to get rid of some of the wierdness with the EBPR entries that is obviously confusing things!

Any tips would be great!