Lilo (mbr) won't load winXP (hdb1)

STATUS: solved
michaelk posted a link to the solution in post #4 -- thanks, Michael.


Hello there

I want to be able to dual boot into either WinXP or Woody (Debian 3.0 stable); I'd prefer doing this with LILO, but whatever works best...

anyways, on to the gory details of why it doesn't work:

Partition information:

hda1 - 100M - /
hda2 - 100M - /tmp
hda3 - 800M - swap
hda5 - 1G - /var
hda6 - 8G - /usr
hda7 - 8G - /home

hdb1 - 72G - WinXP bootable
hdb5 - 32G - FAT32
hdb6 - 8G - NTFS

in the boot record of hda (MBR), I have LILO; in the boot record of hdb, I have whatever windows XP put there - microsoft never was informative.

When I start up LILO, i get a two-item menu: "Linux" and "Windows XP"; Linux works fine, but Windows XP just halts after printing "starting Windows XP" (or something similar). I have waited approximately two minutes for anything to happen (this should be more than enough to bring up the "loading XP" splash screen); no result. Pressing C-M-del has no effect; pressing the power button turns off the system (under Windows XP, it does the equivalent of "shutdown -h now"). Once, I've been put to a halt where C-M-del actually rebooted, but I've been unable to reproduce the situation (however, I'm confident that C-M-del didn't work "just by fluke").

My BIOS allows me to switch the order of my two hard disks, and thus I can boot XP directly (from the hdb boot record, without going through LILO), but this is not a good enough solution for everyday use. As a remark, the same could also be done by switching jumpers around (I should think).

I tried searching the web, but all solutions seemed to instruct me to edit lilo.conf in a way that doesn't work (more on this later); I read through the linuxquestions.org threads on "LILO", no help. I read the LILO manual ("info lilo"), which didn't help me out either. Did I miss anything here?

anyways, here's my lilo.conf:
--- BEGIN ---
lba32
boot=/dev/hda
root=/dev/hda1
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
map=/boot/map
delay=20
prompt
timeout=150
vga=normal
default=Linux
image=/vmlinuz
label=Linux
read-only
image=/vmlinuz.old
label=LinuxOLD
read-only
optional
other=/dev/hdb1
table=/dev/hdb
label="Windows XP"

---- END ----
(comments and blank lines are removed)

I have also tried the following lilo.conf's (only showing what's different from above):

---
other=/dev/hdb1
table=/dev/hdb1
---
other=/dev/hdb
table=/dev/hdb1
---
other=/dev/hdb
table=/dev/hdb
---

whenever I run lilo with lilo.conf looking like the above examples, it fails with this message (brackets mark where the output goes, they are not in the output of lilo):

--- BEGIN ---
[stdout]Added Linux *
[stdout]Skipping /vmlinuz.old
[stderr]Fatal: Partition entry not found
---- END ----

I've read tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+NT-Loader.html, and I might experiment with this (no I've done no testing with it so far); however, I'd strongly prefer to use LILO (or maybe even GRUB, once I get denewbiefied)

---

Miscellaneous stuff:
when running "ps -A", the following gets fed to stderr:
---
{module_list} {module_list_R__ver_module_list}
Warning: /boot/System.map-2.2.20 does not match kernel data.
---
followed by the table of processes.

does this have any relevance? should I do something about this?
---- END RANT ----

so, whatever helpful insight, experince or advice you provide will be greatly appreciated. Actually, thanks for just reading this rather lengthy post

- Jonas

oh, I nearly forgot my own conclusion: I guess the problem is that lilo transfers control to the boot sector of hdb1 instead of the boot record of hdb which XP requires it to. Am I totally wrong here?

---- system information:
Intel P4 processor
Intel motherboard with onboard LAN (gigalan? where's that spec sheet when I need it?) and Sound.
old and dusty SB PCI 128
ASUS V3800 video card
Realtek RTL 8139 PCI fast ethernet NIC
Philips 40x/16/10 CD-burner
erm... "MTRP" 48x CD-ROM drive
one no-name floppy drive
... and what not ... if you want more info, let me know.

I have a slack/WinXP dual boot, and to my experience, XP does not like being on the second drive at all. i had to allocate a tiny partition on hda for windows before it would boot, or even install.

thanks for the reply.

and "hm... this stinks..."

so, the tiny hda partition for winXP - what did it contain? the OS (seems to contradict "tiny")? nothing? boot.ini? some custom-made, hodge-podge boot sector?

also, how big is tiny? unless I'll screw around with my /var, home or usr partition, I won't have many spare megs...

which (linux) partition would be temporarily expendable (for a destructive resize/rebuild operation)? /tmp? /var? /usr? /home?

thanks for the help

- Jonas

anyone has any good experience with XP on hdb? (this is another building block for my tower of microsoft hate)

Here you go:
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=138

Where was XP originally installed?
You may want to check the map-drive function, "man lilo.conf"

well, tiny in my case was 256 megs, not sure what it put on there though, it just refused to install unless something was available on that drive

Thanks for the link michaelk, it worked in my first try (I'm gonna try bumping this up on google ).

Actually, the link didn't, but I found the article. Then, on booting Linux, I had a Kernel Panic; I guessed it would reapper upon reboot, so I reinstalled. Then, I applied the wisdom of the article, which worked in my first try. Thus, I jumped into the roof out of sheer joy, and my gf asked "it works now?" ...

next project: trying to make the NT bootloader flip back to LILO
and making my ethernet work in linux (I'll probably post - whine? - about this soon). Need drivers (or a smack across the head).

anyways, case closed, court dismissed (unless anyone has anything to add on the NT-loader? I got the mini-howto, see post one).

-- Jonas