I was running windows xp. no problems. Now that schools out for summer, i wanted to install linux. so i ran Partition Magic, created a linux partition and a swap partition. however, when the program said it was done partitioning and was going to reboot, it would not boot windows at all. I know it created the partitions, because i successfully installed Slackware 8.1, no unusual problems. all the partitions are there, and i can mount the fat partition and see all my windows stuff, so i know everything is still there. i autoconfigured lilo during install, and it detects DOS and OS/2 partitions. when trying to boot windows from the lilo prompt, it gets shows the windows loading screen, (before installing linux, it just said black screen "Error loading operating system"), but encounters an error. Any help on how i can use linux to get windows xp to boot?

So it starts booting XP but then it fails? If lilo is pointing to the right partition and XP begins to boot but fails, I'd say you have corrupted your XP partition somehow during partitioning.

If you choose DOS in lilo and nothing loads at all then you may have lilo configured incorrectly.

Could you clarify what the "windows loading screen" is?

What partition is windows installed in? Is it where the LILO win entry is pointing to?

If this doesn't work, you could POP *the* windows rescue CD in, boot from it and fixboot at the rescue prompt. If it still doesn't you may have to restore the MBR with the win boot code before which I'd recommend making a linux boot disk.

Post your
/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hda
as root and your lilo.conf

windows is on hda2

the "Windows Loading Screen" is the black screen with the Microsoft Windows XP Professional" logo and the moving progress bar thingy below it. it then proceeds to a blue screen with the following messege:
xmnt2002 program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK
autochk program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK

then a new screen with this:
STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Session Manager Initilization process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x00000000)
The system has been shut down.

then i must remove the battery to get it to turn off.

here's what fdisk -l /dev/hda returned:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 4 32098+ de Dell Utility
/dev/hda2 5 2941 23591452+ 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 * 3006 4864 14932417+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 2942 3005 514080 82 Linux swap

and here is my lilo.conf file:

# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
boot="/dev/hda3"
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout="1200"
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
vga="792"
# Normal VGA console
# vga = normal
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
# vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
# vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
# vga=788
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
# vga=787
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
# vga=771
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
# vga=785
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
# vga=784
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
# vga=769
# End LILO global section
# DOS bootable partition config begins

other = /dev/hda2
label="DOS"
table = /dev/hda
# DOS bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image="/dev/hda2"

image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda3
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
# OS/2 bootable partition config begins

other = /dev/hda2
label = OS2
table = /dev/hda
# OS/2 bootable partition config ends

Lilo has a hard time booting XP, try reinstalling Linux with grub not lilo, if thy are on same same hard drive, try to get a cheep HDD to put Linux on, Best Buy had a 30 GB for $30.

Every thing but Windoze has a place in the world!

Um, this may be similar to a problem another board member is having,...

If you're getting past the linux boot loader, and you're into the windows boot manager when things go awry, you probably need to edit your boot.ini file, which is usually on your c:\ drive, or the first drive that's available to windows, whether fat, or ntfs.

The trick is, if your c:\ drive is fat, you're going to have a fun time, because if your can see it in Linux, it's probably as read only, which means your going to have to find another way around, such as making a bootable disk to load XP.

The way you could have avoided this, besides making an XP rescue disk, is to have used the control panel, or bootcfg to edit boot.ini BEFORE you rebooted your system, but just after having modified your partition structure, which is a trick, I know.

disciple061, I think you have corrupted your XP partition somehow. Once you see the Windows loading screen Lilo has done its job and Windows has taken over.

There is a similar thread here doesn't appear to have arrived on a resolution.

If you're getting the loading screen, that usually means the bootloader has done its job. All it does is, load the 512 bytes of the first sector of the device/partition the 446 bytes that hold the bootloader code will point to the REAL OS boot code. Where this OS code currently resides and the locations where it can be placed and still have the boot loader successfully load it determines how configurable the boot loader is.

I trust LILO for everything and it hasn't failed me once ( and I dont use WinXP) , but I would suggest that you may want to try a different bootloader which is GRUB. The source code is small enough for a quick download/compilation or if you choose you can install the RPMs as well. Let us know how it goes.

would trying a different bootloader really help? i made a windows xp boot disk on another xp machine and booted from that and i still got the same error messages. wouldn't that mean the problem is not with the bootloader? but let me know if GRUB might help, and ill give it a try.


BTW, why is my windows partition read-only when i mount it in linux?

That seems to indicate that your WinXP partition has been corrupted somehow. You can maybe use the Dell restore functionality in the first partition to lay a clean copy of XP on top of what you have. With MSWin, one doesn't enjoy the luxury of installing/ reinstalling modules and what not. Either the OS works or it doesn't work. Switching bootloaders won't make a whole lot of difference here.

Regarding the partition being read-only, NTFS write support in linux is not foolproof yet. There are no guarantees that a write attempt wouldn't corrupt the filesystem. So most distros dont enable the same in your kernel. If you are a really brave soul, there's no stopping you though. For slackware, you are advised to download the vanilla kernel from kernel.org and compile it with the NTFS write option enabled ( along with other options )

That's true. If your partition is truly corrupted, there's not really much you can do anyway, but restore.

But looking at your /dev/hda , it shows your ntfs partition as "Hidden". I'm pretty sure it needs to be made visible to boot, isn't that correct? Before wiping out the partition, your may want to try that, especially if you can do it with the partition magic "boot" & "rescue" disks that you can use for problems like these.

I have the exact same problem as the person above. Windows XP begins to boot then I get the same error. Someone above mentioned editing the boot.ini file or something. I can access my windows drive through the recovery portion of XP setup CD. How should I edit the boot.ini file to fix the xmnt2002, autochk errors? Thanks

I had this same problem, though in my case I was not running Linux at all--just multiple partitions of Windows. While booting Windows 2003 Web Edition, I got
autochk program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK

Based on a tip from another discussion, I fixed it by "unhiding" the NTFS partition. In my case, I used Boot_It NextGen to set the partition type to 7 (NTFS). That fixed it for me.

Boot_It NextGen is shareware (~$35) and can be found at http://www.terabyteunlimited.com

Problem solved!

when riordanmr said i should try unhiding the windows partition, i got to thinking and used cfdisk to change the type from hidden to unhidden!
Windows seems so slow after only using linux for the past few weeks, though. oh well. welcome back to the world of microsoft =(

thanks for all the help guys!!

Good to know disciple061. Thanks for updating this thread; hopefully it will serve many others.