Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition keeps destroying Win XP
 

Basically here is the problem:

I keep trying to install Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition on my PC alongside Windows XP SP1. It resizes the Windows NTFS partition and installs Linux but when I try to boot into Windows via GRUB, GRUB comes up with "unreconisable partition" referring to the NTFS Partition. The Linux half works fine so I'm wondering whats gone wrong.

I installed Grub firstly in the MBR and then when I tried again at the front of the first Linux Partition. Both came up with the same problem.

My PC is as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 2200+
Gigabyte 7VT600 Motherboard.
512mb of PC2100 Crucial DDR Ram in two 256mb sticks.
A HIS Radeon 9800 128mb GFX card.
A Maxtor 60gb DiamondMax Plus9 ATA133 HDD.
A Pioneer DVD drive and an unbranded 40x/16/48x CD-R/RW drive.
An AVer DVB-T Digital TV Card.
A GST 108mbps High Speed Wireless Network Card (using the Atheros AT5001 chipset).


I know its the dream of every Linux fan (me included and I'm only just getting to know Linux!) but I *really* do need Windows XP on my HDD.

If anyone can help me sort this problem out then please help, thank you! :D

P.s I say once again I am a :newbie:

Read this and see if it applies to you.

That is exactly what it does to my PC!!!

But how do I set the heads "to a sensible value, normally 255"?

Also could I use..say any LiveCD like Knoppix to help solve this fault?

I *think* they just mean use fdisk to change the partition table. You may be able to fix it in linux and reboot.

Could you do a fdisk -l on your drive and also fdisk -l /dev/whatever on your windows partition and post the results ?

Once you see where the problem is you should be able to use the -H option in fdisk to fix it. See the fdisk man page and think carefully before doing this tho. Also see if grub provides an mbr backup the way lilo does.

*stares blankly*

How do I use Linux Fdisk and where can I find it?

And what do the -I and -H options mean?

SORTED!
 

Yeah I did some digging and detective work elsewhere and found out that if I changed the mode on my Hard Drive to LBA then it would somehow force Grub to set the partition table properly. This must be down to the fact that LBA sets the heads at 255!

Anyway thanks for your help! My problem is solved...so sad that I wasn't told about this before I really want to punch the bloke at Mandrake who gave the nod to releasing this cos if I had been told before I installed it first time I would have all my photos that I have ammassed since late 2002 here today >.<

I plan to install Mandrake 10.0 Official soon. Did anyone else observe this partition problem with Mandrake 10.0 Official release ? If so, can you tell us what steps should we take to prevent it to happened.
Thanks in advance.

Right d4d4n9 firstly read the page which doug_s's link point to if you haven't already.

Firstly I've installed Mandrake 10 on my Windows 2000 laptop (installed on an NTFS partition) and it didn't have any problems at all. That was why I was very puzzled why it didn't like XP but more or less liked 2k.

Anyway to avoid it go into your Bios Setup and go to your general settings. Then select your hard drive and view the options for that.

When you see the options for setting the mode of the hard drive, you'll see it'll be set at "AUTO". Change that to LBA.

That should sort it out. I tried it out early this morning and it worked!

Good luck!

Thanks Pudduh for the tip.
I'm sure the my hard drives BIOS setting are "auto" as usually adviced in windoze forum ;).
But if it messed up the hard disks, well , it's better to change that to LBA.
Thanks again.

Could someone clarify what do those BIOS options "LBA", "Large", and "Auto" actually mean and do?

MDK 10 works here like a charm, but Fedora 2 did not.

Wont boot XP after MDK 10 install
 

Yep, you and perhaps half the people in the world that have tried Mandrake 10 with windows in a dual boot configuration have this problem. Mandrake claims this bug has been resolved. I found this bug to be one of the most annoying one in my 35 years of using computers. After a lot of experimentation if found the windows XP will not boot after installing Mandrake 10.0 Community IF you do ANY kind of partitioning. My solution was to do all the partitioning with (perhaps 9.2 Mandrake will work) Partition Magic. From all the reading about this problem on the web, I can to the conclusion that the problem effects people that have:
1) larger than 40 GB disks (maybe)
2) have "cloned" there windows XP from another disk with a different geometry.
3) None of my bios'es had a "LBA" option -- out of 3 computers -- maybe they are too new. (This was the Mandrake "fix" to the problem).

I am perhaps very angry at Mandrake for their arrogant stance about this bug, so my comments may be a little tainted. I believe that Mandrake should supply some kind of a fix that can be easily downloaded to a cdrom or floppy that will recover your windows system. I found that after I installed the 10.0 system, I could not recover the windows XP system using all the traditional recovery methods. For example, the windows "recovery console" would "blue screen".
(If someone wants to put Bill Gates out of business, this kind of corruption of the partition table would be the perfect virus -- no data corruption, but unable to boot or re-install windows). The "rescue" options of the 10 & 9.2 install disk did nothing. fdisk /mbr did nothing. Almost every partitioning tool I could find would crash (in windows) when that disk was powered on. The only way I could re-install Windows XP was to first zero the first sector of the disk.
Well, today I am using Mandrake 10.0 community, hoping the problem will be fixed in the official -- but I doubt it. Mandrake needs to get their support people out of the mode of sweeping bugs under the rug. A bug report should be treated as a "gift from heaven", instead of 'avoided at all costs'. When I was working for a large computer company that required bugs to be tracked, a popular way to avoid a bug was to mark it as a duplicate of another bug or to transfer it to another responsible entity and then mark it as a duplicate when it came back. If you read the bug reports on Mandrake 10, you will see a lot of that -- with very frustrated "customers" in the wings. The only way a bug report should be "resolved" or "closed" or "not reproducible" is by the person that submitted it. A business will fail when it forgets that it's the customers that pay the bills and the salaries.

BTW, the only way I was able to get my Windows XP to boot again was to use an old CD "card" called "linuxcare" I got at a trade show many years ago. I had to loose my linux partitions in the process. (I do not have a floppy drive)
Well, hopefully, my boot problems after a Mandrake 10 install are just a bad dream.

I used Partition Magic to resize my NTFS partition first. It works like charm.

I would not use the new kernel until they sort this out: SuSe 9.1 and fedora has it and the steps to sort it out are a nightmare for newbies and will put you off linux forever.
These links may help Mandrake users also.
fedora fix
suse fix

out of all the times I have tri booted. I needed a old windows for some compatability probs in xp. anyways. besides the LBA mode. most bios's default to LBA. LBA has been defaulted as long as I can remember. If some of the newer computers don't have a LBA setting. Then it is default. LBA = Logical Block Addressing. This method is used to recognize divers that are larger than 528MB. now I don't see why anyone would not have LBA or even not use it. If you have anything bigger then that size above. the hard drive is auto using LBA in the bios. I have only really seen this boot problem from people that are using linux to repartition a windows partition to add a linux partition. Another thing to remember. have the boot loader set on the fist sector of the boot partition. If not. there will be problems too. I have reinstalled many times and never had this problem, except once. So I really don't know what to say. But to dual boot or tri boot. As we all know. the OS's have to be installed in a certain order or else nothing works. I don't use linux to resize a windows partition though. Maybe that is the difference.

I have XP and Mandrake 10.0 Official on both a desktop and notebook with no issues that you have experienced. Goodluck