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what's wrong with my HDD

I installed winXP and debian on my computer,
when i type
fdisk -l, it warns£ºcan't open /dev/hda
cfdisk, it warns£ºFATAL ERROR: Cannot open disk drive
what's the crux?
Also ,i tried to create a linux link file linux.lnx by:
dd if=/dev/hda8 of=/mnt/hda1/linux.lnx bs=512 count=1(I have a swap partition and / partition hda8),and added a line in boot.ini c:\linux.lnx="Linux"
I thought this way i can utilize the windows OS Loader to boot my linux system.
But this wouldn't work, i got a blank screen.
Is the above two problem related?
Thanks.

Re: what's wrong with my HDD

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan I installed winXP and debian on my computer...

I assume in this order...?

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan ...when i type
fdisk -l, it warns£ºcan't open /dev/hda {huh? what's that?}
cfdisk, it warns£ºFATAL ERROR: Cannot open disk drive
what's the crux?

Dunno, but I'd guess something is wrong with the partition table. Give some more information, please, will you :)...

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan Also ,i tried to create a linux link file linux.lnx by:
dd if=/dev/hda8 of=/mnt/hda1/linux.lnx bs=512 count=1(I have a swap partition and / partition hda8),and added a line in boot.ini c:\linux.lnx="Linux"
I thought this way i can utilize the windows OS Loader to boot my linux system.
But this wouldn't work, i got a blank screen.

That would work when you installed GRUB / LILO in /dev/hda8. Usually it is in /boot when it is not in the MBR. Infos please... (Btw, just for the record, this is not a link in the Linux-sense, it is a file of 512 kb size </nitpicking>)

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan Is the above two problem related?

Possibly but I doubt it. Give some more information also on how you started the system (or did you?) and how you made dd work...

Thanks for your comments.
I installed winxp,then linux(two partitions,swap and /),and grub in mbr instead of hda8.
There seemed to be something wrong with the debian installer's partition tool,It failed a few times,complaining "can't create partition XXX",finally it succeeded,I don't know why.
The system looks fine except the two problems I mentioned.
It boots successfully via grub,but can't boot via windows OS Loader.

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan ...grub in mbr...

Aha ;).

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan ...There seemed to be something wrong with the debian installer's partition tool,It failed a few times,complaining "can't create partition XXX",finally it succeeded,I don't know why.

I suggest you have a look at this with som other tool like e.g. (gnu)parted (comes with debian?) or else try

ftp://bmrc.berkeley.edu/pub/linux/re...ble-0.3.tar.gz
http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/
http://www.partimage.org/
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/download.en.html
http://www.sysresccd.org/

Quote:

Originally posted by ccmilan ...It boots successfully via grub,but can't boot via windows OS Loader.

Of course not ;). The GRUB-loader stage resides in the MBR of /dev/hda. Do a

Code:



dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/hda1/linux.lnx bs=512 count=1 {NOT /dev/hda8}

and copy / move linux.lnx to C:/.

After that your system starts with GRUB, you should be able to select WinXP, get the XP-loader and have an option there to jump back to GRUB :D. At least that's the way I do it with NT...