Since yesterday I haven't been able to get back into my windows XP system when I let Suse 9.2 partition my hard drive and install.

I have searched through this forum and tried many different bootloader configurations and have not had any success.

I restored the bootload back to it's original settings which are

root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Currently, when I go to boot my Windows XP it says,

root (hd0,0)
filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xc
chainloader +1

I think this has changed after I have been messing with grub because it went from saying filesystem type is "windows" to now saying "fat", and the 0xc doesn't seem like it was always 0xc either I though there was an 8 somewhere in there.

Anyway, any help is appreciated. In another thread someone solved a problem by having them run this command and post it's output.

/sbin/fdisk -l
-----------------------

Disk /dev/hda: 185.2 GB, 185283624960 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 22526 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 11219 90116586 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 11220 11350 1052257+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3 11351 22525 89763187+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4870 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 4870 39118243+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

------------------------

Thank you for any help,
Tony

Try rootnoverify
(er, in place of the root keyword)

Hi Syg00,

I tried that today and it didn't work allthough I appreciate your help.

I have put a fresh install of XP on my secondary hard drive and moved some things around to get my files in the right place. The last thing I am trying to do now is get linux to mount the secondary hard drive which is an NTFS drive now.

I have a laptop with a dual boot between Suse 9.2 and XP and everything works fine on it including reading the NTFS partition. I copied the line from the fstab file which mounts the drive and changed it from hda1 to hdb1. But still does not work.

I also have tried it in the console under root and I get this

command# mount -t ntfs -o r /dev/hdb1 /windows/C
mount: special device /dev/hdb1 does not exist

This is my fstab file
--------------------------
/dev/hda3 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hdb1 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda1 /windows/D vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda2 swap swap pri=42 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/dvdrecorder /media/dvdrecorder subfs fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
--------------------------------------------------

Any ideas on what may be wrong?

If anyone knows how to use a boot disc to edit the windows ntfs files like the old boot disks for windows 98 use to work I'd be able to finish my system that way to.

I'm trying to move my registry from the lost XP system in the partition to the new one on my secondary drive at this point because I think that will be faster than trying to get grub to boot the other xp.

Thanks!
Tony

I went thru the entire experience you describe; I installed Suse 9.2 on a brand new Toshiba A65 "Satellite" laptop that already had Win XP preloaded on it. Once I installed LX, WinXP would not boot in GRUB, it hung at the infamous "ChainLoader +1" prompt.

Check all of my previous postings on this website about this; I'm not going to retype everything that is already online here. The problem was an old bug from LX 9.1 that is still in 9.2; a large size WinXP partition will not be set up correctly in the partitioning tables for GRUB to dual boot correctly.

When you install LX, slam the size of the WinXP partition down to the bare minimum; on my laptop HD it was 11 GB. Viola! Both WinXP & SUSE LX nor dual booted correctly. Then I went into PartitionMagic on my XP system and increased the XP partition size up to 16GB in the undefined area between WinXP & SUSE. The rest of the undefined area I made into a FAT32 partition "F" that is visible from both WinXP and SUSE LX so I can move files back & forth.

Good luck.
Regards,
Moonrover

Thank you Moonrover,

Glad I found someone who could understand my pain,

I will resize the partition after I get some files off it. Somehow I wound up with XP on a Fat32 instead of NTFS so I won't need a small Fat32 partition for moving files. I think because I upgraded to XP from Win98 on that partition.

Thanks a million for the tip, it's too bad Suse 9.2 still has this bug. They must know about it yet they don't offer any warning when you use their installer to partition the drive.

Thanks again,
Tony

The Win XP partition will be read-only from Suse LX, and from WinXP you can't see the LX partition unless you install some 3rd-party program listed elsewhere on this site, so I succumbed to not messing around any more by putting a new FAT32 partition in between both Operating Systems using Partition Magic running on XP.

Regards,
Moonrover

Yea I can understand not messing with a system that you just got to work.

Have you seen this by any chance,

http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html

I give it a couple hours before I concluded that it doesn't work but it's supposed to fix the large partition table problem somehow. I tried to get the driver update thing to work but it would read the disk containing the file the have and never find an update. I figured that since the instruction was for 9.1 my 9.2 system didn't need the file. And the file is not available on their ftp server for 9.2.

Yet you'd think if this update was included it would have worked in the first place.

Very confusing that is.

-----------------------------------

Oh, and do you know how to do a NTFS boot disk where you can rename system files on the XP system.

If I could just do that, I would make the XP partition that isn't working smaller as you suggested but instead convert it into the swap drive for transferring files between the XP on the NTFS system and Linux. I'm keen on getting the NTFS XP drive to work for me by renaming the system folder I transferred from the *not working Xp partition* to replace the new system folder the new installation created on that drive. I have my program files and I managed to transfer the system *user* files so My desktop even looks the same. Just need the registry now.

Yes, I saw that, that's when I found out it was broken in 9.1. Again, taking the path of least resistance, rather than following all that stuff to resurrect my XP, I Googled the problem and found plenty of people that had gotten 9.2 LX to work OK coexisting with WinXP; a clue was in picking a small size XP partition when LX is sysgened onto the HD. Once you get it gen'ed OK, then you can jack it back up to something a little more reasonable thru a variety of techniques. I left it at 16GB; I don't want to temp fate and experiment any further.

Regards,
Moonrover

No, I do not know how to do a NTFS boot disk where you can rename system files on the XP system. Not on my radar screen of things to solve.

Thanks for all your help moonrover,

I'll post the result after I'm finished if I figure anything new out