For those with the slow performance problem on boot-up of Win2K, chances are that you’re C: drive (the Win2K boot partition) has a backup copy of the boot section which is causing Win2K to detect an invalid volume.

You may see a chkdsk msg at boot or may have problems using the Disk Management Tools (in MMC).

The surprising thing I found was having backed up he ext3 partition & then the problem still remained?

I then checked the dos partitions and found the problem. I had a look at the drive using Norton's diskeditor and the c: drive had a copy of the boot sector in the reserved area before the FAT's.

1. I backed up the C: to another partition (file/s only) using some good tools (DOSLFN and a compression prog').

2. Then used fdisk to whip the partition table into shape.

3. Then re-created the Win2K partition, copied all the files back then did a standard Win2K repair (manual and only selected to check/fix the boot sector & startup.)

4. Re-installed a basic Linux setup, then copied my Linux files back to the ext3.

On reboot - everything was back to normal and the Win2K problem is gone!!!

Hope this helps.

See, I just recently had the same problem sort of. I installed Win2k for scanner ( still not supported in linux ) and Photoshop purposes, then Slackware as a dual boot. But I had problems, found out my soundcard was causing all kinds of problems, so its removed now. Everything working fine.. for a day or so.. Win2k was working and booting up fine, Linux was working way better, way faster... etc..
But then I had to reboot into Windows, it won't boot. It just starts with "Starting Windows 2000.... " then reboots. Tried safe mode, nothing..

So my quick and simple fix was this, boot into Linux and made it a 4 GB /data partition... That's how you fix Windows problems, you reformat it and install Linux over it..

Sorry canutelmehowman to parade in your post about your fix.. that's cool and good information for the newbies..

But tricky, did you solve your scanner compatibility with linux issue? When I got my scanner back in 1999 I was thinking ahead and got a SCSI one - none the problems with *NIX . This is how you solve scanner compatibility problem

Even though I liked using that machine to scan images, cause it was fast and that's the machine I do most of my image editing.. I just plugged the scanner in another box running a dual boot.

Problem solved.

PS, I wasn't thinking ahead when I got my scanner, I chose mine by the size of the scanner.. (wanted a fairly small and slim one) and the amount of money I had in my pocket at the time..

Mine wasn't a pocket biter either, I got UMAX Astra 1220S for $150 back then, and you know that were times when imaging hardware just made it to an end-user haven, so most of the scanners were in the range of 120 bucks, sure the SCSI PCI card that was shipped with the scanner wasn't supported by kernel back then but I cut a good deal for an Adaptec AHA2940 (I believe) on e-bay - got it for 15 bucks man.

Fix for the problem is confirmed... Backing up and re-formatting the C: and or ext partition works.

Keep smiling

I just did a RedHat 8.0 install onto a partition coexisting wth Win2k on the same drive. No problems at all with Win2k boot up. Win2k partition is NTFS. Does this "slow problem" only occur when wink2 partion is Fat32?

I'm really not sure why the problem occured in the first place - it could be a bug in W2k or tghe grub boot loader. I guess if you use standard partition managers everything should be ok, but I do notice that having partitioned using fdisk, while installing RH8 - I got a msg reporting a strange partition issue - I did tell RH to fix the fault, though whenever I use some other partition tools, they report that there is problems with the partition table

Who do you believe? I think that this COULD have had something to do with the fault though am not sure.

Tools I've used include fdisk, Ranish PM, P.Magic 6&7, W2k Disk Manager and RH's fdisk tool.

The fault is most likely a simple incompatibiliy issue between one or more of applications about (moving partitions / boot sectors, etc) around.

But definitely re-formating both partition's fixed the fault. I'm pretty sure that the fault was NOT with the ext3 partition.