ok, it's been a while since i wanted to even venture back into XP... i had resized the partitions during the install so XP would have 16 gb, and mandrake linux would have 22 gb. well today i needed to go to my school's website, which only runs on netscape 4.5 but not any newer than 6.0, or MSIE. i rebooted, selected windows... the computer was loading, then restarted itself. so i popped in the WinXP cd, and try to restore... it says to type exit. i type exit, it restarts... and windows is still not there. so i reboot from cd again, and it says i have 4 parts of my hd... i know i split it into 2 - one for windows, one for linux. what's going on here? did i FUBAR major and lose all my info on windows? how do i know which partition is which - linux did not tell me the drive letters... apparently i have c, d, e, and g. what's going on here?

Open a shell in Mandrake

su
root password

fdisk -l /dev/hdx

were x is the channel your drive is on.

It'll give you a list of the respective partitions

There is always the final option of re-installing the Windows bootloader. - if you wanted to do that then pop in your 1st Mandrake cd -

Press F1

then type

rescue

youll see a menu in which you can choose to re-install the Windows bootloader - or LILO if your having problems with Mandrake

ok i just did the fdisk -l /dev/hda

"/dev/hda1 * 1 2155 17310006 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2156 4870 21808237+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 2156 2919 6136798+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 2920 2982 506016 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 2983 4870 15165328+ 83 Linux"

am i correct in thinking hda1 and hda2 belong to windows?

would it be easier, since i am sorta in between being a newbie/almost intermediate user of linux/unix, to reinstall the windows bootloader?

well, hda1 is your windows partition, and the * signifies that it's the bootable partition. hda2 is somewhat misleading, it doesn't really exist - you'll notice that the next three fit inside it when you look at the sectors. it's an extended partition, and the others are logical (since you can only have 4 primary partitions, if you want more than that you have to subdivide)

anyway, that's somewhat off topic. you may have a problem in your etc/lilo.conf file. if you posted that here we might be able to find a way to solve the problem without reinstalling windows bootloader. otherwise, that's not really all that difficult, and once you have xp booting again you can reinstall LILO pretty easily too.

I had a similar problem with Red Hat 8 when i was experimenting with running a web server before I put it on a dedicated machine. I am running Windows XP and it wouldnt boot. I mounted the windows partition from Red Hat and found that nearly all of my files had dissapeared. Luckily I had a backup and had to reinstall windows! I would check to see if your files are there first!

I am a newbie myself (back me up here vets) but, if you resized an existing xp partition you may have in essence wiped it. Now, Assuming you installed XP after you did the partitioning it, it is entirely possible you borked the xp mbr. If your xp install is good then boot with your xp cd (make a linux boot disk first!!!) go to the recovery console, instead of typing exit, type the following:

fixmbr [ENTER]

that will re-write the master boot record with what xp expects to see.... um, come to think of it, xp should have asked you which winodws OS you want to log into first. Sorta sounds like you borked the xp os when you resized the partitions.

Why will resizing partitions mess up the XP partition? I just dont get it...

It depends on the type of partition.
If you want to resize a FAT32 partition, there is no problem.
However, Linux does not know how to correctly resize a NTFS partition.

So, it may be better to install winXP on a FAT32 partition.
WinXP will not have the secure file system setup, but anyways, windows is not even secure to begin with

ok here is a copy of my /etc/lilo.conf file...


boot="/dev/hda"
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout="100"
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
vga="ask"

image="/boot/vmlinuz"
label="linux"
root="/dev/hda5"
initrd="/boot/initrd.img"
append="devfs=mount acpi=off quiet"
vga=788
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=off"
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=off failsafe"
read-only

other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda

other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

also, as long as i run into lilo (how can i make it wait, say, 20 or 30 seconds?) and i am able to choose which OS i want to run, that will be great. the way it is set is for 7 seconds i think...

XP was preinstalled when i bought this computer a year and half ago. i already have a linux boot disk... if i enter fixmbr, will that rewrite the mbr to what it originally was (ex. the restore program in XP, which restores your HD to the way it was at a certain date), would that overwrite LM?

Change this line

timeout="100"

to

200 for 20 seconds
300 for 30 seconds etc ect ect

remeber to run

/sbin/lilo

as root user from a shell to make the changes take effect

ok, thanks skyline... i put in 250, for 25 seconds...

i'm gonna restart and try the rescue-fixmbr commands... wish me luck!

good luck

ok, i did it, but it said it was going to install windows bootloader... i kinda want to keep lilo... any way i could access the data on the windows mbr from linux so i can save it before reinstalling the windows bootloader?