Bluescreen when trying to dual-boot XP & Linux
 

Ok, so I've been toying around with Linux for about a year and a half now. In that time period I've gone through just about every distro one can think of, Mandrake 10, Slackware 9.1, Fedora Core 1, Suse 9, Gentoo (albeit unsuccesfully), FreeBSD (not Linux, but still, similar enough to mention) and a few of the much smaller distros. So anyhow, In the past I've always gotten everything to dual boot, usually after a little bit of tweaking, or using the GAG boot loader instead of the typical LILO or Grub that comes with most distros. However, the last time I formatted I had some trouble getting things to dual-boot, I could get Linux started, however, Windows would blue screen before it could load, with the message "unmountable boot volume". So, after a while I decided to give up formatted my entire HD for Windows (160gig hard drive, but windows only sees 127gigs, and even with the controller card it doesn't recognize the rest).

Well, now I want to try Fedora Core 2 (don't care about some of the issues it has had with dual-booting, nothing else is working right either), and I've been fiddling with it for about two days now with no success. I started out by backing up, formatting everything, then makine a 80 gig NTFS partition, installing windows, then using the other 80 gigs for linux Root and Swap partitions. I installed GRUB to the first part of the hard drive (NOT MBR), and made sure that was going ok. Then I installed Linux. When I went to boot Windows, which I always try first, it gave me the "unmountable boot volume error".

Since then, I've tried a variety of things, installing GRUB to MBR, using GAG bootloader (which can run completely off of a cd, not on HD or MBR), installing my controller card for the HD (which hasn't made a difference), making Windows a 30gig FAT32 partition, fixing the MBR with the recovery disk, so on and so forth, however, nothing gets me back into Windows except completely removing all Linux partitions. And now, instead of the "unmountable boot volume" error, I get " A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer" when I try to boot it (with Linux partitions).

I'm just about at the end of my very high patience for computer problems.. I'm thinking that the reason Linux worked before is because I installed it in the part of the hard drive that windows "couldn't see" (i.e., past 127gb), however, when I try that now I still get the error. I'm almost positive that the error has nothing to do with my MBR because even when I don't touch it I still get the error, it's literally as though Windows doesn't want the Linux partitions there...

Just so you guys know, I have searched both these forums and Google several times about this issue and can't seem to find anything that's directly related to this problem. Most threads/links just talk about fixing the MBR which has not worked for me.

For anyone who made it through this insanely long post, or even those that haven't thanks very much for your time.

Wow
 

You really like Neil Stephenson.. quite the essay. OK, so..

You installed linux and other OS's with GAG, whatever that is. You have to do step by step with this, because if you do overwrite the windows partition, it will be upset.

A dos/win fdisk boot floppy. Boot to it. Hit "fdisk /mbr". If in linux and got not floppy, "/sbin/lilo -u". Power off.

OK, if you have parition magic, use it. Format off 100 Gig's for windows as a primary partition. Leave the rest alone. Install windows. Reboot. If no partition magic, set the primary to 100 manually, or whatever size you want. Leave the rest alone.

Install linux. Smoke the empty space and format/partition it within linux. Use LILO if a VERY new OS. Use GRUB otherwise. Don't get ghetto with some old ass nostalgic distro. LILO had a drive size limit on that drive not too long ago(1 year). Install the bootloader on the MBR.

Reboot. You should see LILO or GRUB Pop up with box OS's listed. Do not jack with the windows partition. It will explode and kill you.

You have all the basic stuff down. It's the order that's important when dual booting windows me or greater. They like installing shit in the MBR just because. Good luck.

Well, you are certainly providing a lot of background, but at least to me there are 4 questions that are unclear: what exactly is installed on your system right now, what action were you trying to take when this problem first surface, what system response you did you observe, and how did that response differs from what you were expecting? From what I can tell, you are attempting to dual boot XP and Linux, and although you've had total success for the past 18 months, Windows now complains if you try to boot it. Based on the other comments you've supplied, it certainly sounds as if the MBR has been corrupted in some way.

I'm not at all familiar with this GAG bootloader you mention (to be honest I've never heard of it) but if your MBR is hosed, probably the best thing to do is to boot into the C:\ prompt in Windows using either an installation CD for either Win98 or XP, then run the appropriate command to restore the MBR to a Windows-friendly state. Under Win98, the command would be "fdisk /mbr" and under XP it would be "fixmbr". That should permit you to successfully boot into Windows, and if so, then you would want to reboot under Linux, then rerun either your lilo or GRUB command to re-establish the dual-boot.

I'm not sure whether this will help or not, but good luck with it, and welcome to LQ. Please post back if you have questions or other comments. -- J.W.

GAG's cool! It wouldn't boot BeOS for me, though. :( You might have luck with the drive size issue if you can get a BIOS flash from your board manufacturer. Windows asks your BIOS how to think. Linux found it because it uses the BIOS only to actually boot the machine.

On the "unmountable boot volume problem"......perhaps when FC installed, it changed the "bootable" flag for the linux partition and Windows is reading the MBR, thinking, what's this open-source crap on MY drive???Check this in Linux with "fdisk /dev/hda" and hit "P" to print the table. See whether that's what's going on.

What exactly is installed on your system right now?

One 127gb Windows XP Home Partition.

[b]What action were you trying to take when this problem first surfaced?[b]

I was trying to setup a dualboot system ony my existing free space with Fedora Core 2 (I am aware of some of the problems people have had with it killing Windows partitions, but other distros have given me the same problem)

What system response you did you observe?

At first I recieved a blue screen when Windows was booting that said "Unmountable boot volume", however, later that message changed to "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer."

How did that response differs from what you were expecting?

I was expecting Windows to boot properly, as it has in the past (regardless of my bootloader, I know it's not GAG's fault because LILO and GRUB do the same thing, and I'm not even installing GAG to MBR or HD, just using it straight from the boot CD)

From what I can tell, you are attempting to dual boot XP and Linux, and although you've had total success for the past 18 months, Windows now complains if you try to boot it. Based on the other comments you've supplied, it certainly sounds as if the MBR has been corrupted in some way.


You see, this is what seems odd to me. Even if I do fdisk the MBR I still cannot access Windows until I completely remove any Linux partitions I've created. It still bluescreens every time up until their deletion.

Anyhow, I downloaded Partition Magic, and I'm going through step by step the directions I've been given and see what happens. Thanks a lot guys

GAG's cool! It wouldn't boot BeOS for me, though. :( You might have luck with the drive size issue if you can get a BIOS flash from your board manufacturer. Windows asks your BIOS how to think. Linux found it because it uses the BIOS only to actually boot the machine.

Yeah, I never did check into the drive size issue... I'll check that out.


On the "unmountable boot volume problem"......perhaps when FC installed, it changed the "bootable" flag for the linux partition and Windows is reading the MBR, thinking, what's this open-source crap on MY drive???Check this in Linux with "fdisk /dev/hda" and hit "P" to print the table. See whether that's what's going on.



I've played around with the bootable flag, and while I don't remember what FC does by default, I dont think that is the problem. However, it's worth checking out. Thanks again

Re: Wow
 

Ok, I followed Thoreau's install guide step by step, and I still get the bluescreen and "Unmountable boot volume" as the error... I'm wondering if maybe I have to force LBA in the Linux installation? Partition magic said something about possibly having a problem because the partition was past the 1024 (I think) cylinder....

You might want to try this.
(Should tell you all about drive problems...)

That testdisk thing is a cool little tool. Sweet! I learned two things this week now. Also, in regards to Snowcrash3d, what bootloader did you use? Is it GAG still? Because the cylinder limit is a limit if you either a) put /boot at the ass end of the drive after / or swap b) have a bootloader that can't figure it out after a certain size disk limit is reached c) the windows partition scheme got jacked with and it's confused. I'm gonna opt for for a b and c mixture here. But, i'm just guessing.

I know LILO and GruB work, but whether that GAG thing is still on your MBR, I don't know. But I'd think that the above posted tool would help. Good luck.

Snowcrash,

Is your windows load SP1 or later? I'm guessing it isn't since you're only seeing 127gb of your drive. You need the 48bit LBA that SP1 enables (allows windows to see/use drives 160gb, and larger). Once that's done, when you look at your drive in computer management, you should see your 127gb windows partion, and the remaining hard drive space as unallocated. I had this problem with windows 2000 pre-SP3 (which enabled the same 48bit LBA).

If you install linux on that unused hard drive space without updating windows first, then the next time you boot into windows, it reads the partion tables in the MBR and says something to the effect of...

"So let me get this straight. You're a 127gb drive and you're telling me you have partions all the way out to 150gb?" (I think that's how much usable space is on a 160gb drive.)

It doesn't matter to Windows that it's only using 127gb, that's all it can see and so it interpurts the extra linux partion information as a corrupt MBR (or whole drive) and hence blue screens.

Either way, in my case with Windows 2000, I had to apply SP-3 (I applied SP-4 also, but the fix I needed was in SP-3), then make a quick registry edit and reboot. Once Windows recognized the rest of the drive, the dual boot worked fine. Granted Windows didn't recognize the linux partion types, but it accepted that they were there and left them alone.

Hope this helps,

Joe