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Old 06-18-2004, 09:42 PM   #1
nostrum
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Can't Access Windows Partition


Hi I just installed Red Hat 9 on my Vaio. I previously had the whole hard drive dedicated to Windows then I used Partition Magic 8 to repartition for the Linux install. The install went fine but now when I boot up the Grub Boot loader only shows my Linux partition. I can tell the Windows partition is still there on hda1, I just can't boot into it. Any help on how I can either get Grub to recognize it or should I switch to Lilo? Or is it going to take me using the Partition Magic Rescue disks to boot into Windows and delete the Linux partitions and start over again? I don't believe the data in the Windows partition was touched since I used Disk Druid to partition and selected the two partitions I had created with Partition Magic for my Linux install. I had one swap and the other is ext2 or ext3. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Spiros
 
Old 06-18-2004, 09:54 PM   #2
leonscape
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You need to tell grub about the Windows partition. edit the /boot/grub/menu.list and add to the bottom something like:

Code:
title Windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Now you'll get the Windows option at boot. If it doesn't work, you may have damaged windows. ( You did resize I hope, and make backups )

Last edited by leonscape; 06-18-2004 at 09:56 PM.
 
Old 06-18-2004, 10:01 PM   #3
synapse
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Hi

I think that what has happened was that the linux boot loader has overwritten your mbr on your primary drive resulting in a loss of booting windows. mmm this is strange as i read somewhere that grub will autodetect the oses. I dont use grub myself (prefer lilo).

Anyway at the end of the rh installation were you given some kind of option as of where to install the bootloader, if you were it probabaly would have been better to install the bootloader to the root partition of your linux installation, to fix your problem you could try poping in the windows cd to fix the bootloader (what version of win are you using 98 nt etc )

Hope that helped
cheers
ps there is also a windows fdisk option that will rewrite your mbr i think its C:fdisk /mbr but im not 100% sure
 
Old 06-18-2004, 10:18 PM   #4
nostrum
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Hmm...

I did remember to resize the partitions when I was using Partition Magic. And I'm running Windows XP Personal Edition. Any other information I should include?
 
Old 06-18-2004, 10:24 PM   #5
leonscape
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No if its the firs partition on the primary master drive ( hda1 / C ) Then what I listed above should work.

try mounting the disk in Linux to check everthings still there

Code:
su
password: ( type your root password, though nothing will appear on screen )
mkdir /mnt/winC
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/winC
It might not be vfat so try ntfs ( Don't write to the driver if its ntfs though, as you can damage the disk ).
 
Old 06-18-2004, 10:45 PM   #6
nostrum
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Hmm..

The Window's partition is the second partition on the hard drive (whcih there is only one of), it's right behind my swap parition. Then comes the Linux partition. the Windows is hda1, Swap is hda3, and Linux is hda2. I tryed mounting my Windows partition like you suggested and I know it's ntfs since that's what the hardware browser tells me. But when I try to mount it Linux tells me my kernal doesn't support ntfs. That sounds weird to me cause I thought it would automatically.
 
Old 06-18-2004, 11:08 PM   #7
nostrum
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Well it didn't go too well.

Well I did what you said and edited my /boot/menu.lst and that went fine Grub detected Windows and began loading it. The Windows XP logo appears and it begins to load but soon afterwards it drops me to the screen the Partition Magic was using when I edited/resized my partitions and said two things were missing they came across the screen so fast I can't really read them and then the machine reboots. I have Partition Magic rescue disks which I am going to try to use but I don't know what to do with them exactly. Any more ideas? Or am I about to lose all my Windows data?


Thanks again leonscape and synapse for all your help.
-Spiros
 
Old 06-18-2004, 11:17 PM   #8
leonscape
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Ahh if windows is the second partition, and wasn't before partition magic, they you have to trick windows into thinking its still on the first partition.

Try:

Code:
title Windows
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
map (hd0,0) (hd0,1)
map (hd0,1) (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
If root(hd0,0) worked for you then it maybe that the bootloader is still there and wasn't moved by partition magic.

Some Distros don't put the ntfs module into Linux by default ( as its considered experimental and dangerous ). Theres porblems with writing to ntfs disks. Try adding it ( one of the redhat-config programs probably does this ).

If this doesn't work move your swap to the other end of the disk ( which is a better position for it anyway. ) and move windows to the front again.

Never used partition magic so I can't help with that.
 
Old 06-19-2004, 12:17 AM   #9
nostrum
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The output from booting into Windows..

Leonscape I can't thank you enough for your help. I haven't tryed the things from your last post sicne I've been trying to tsolve the problem on the Partition Magic end. I wrote down the error message outputed during my boot up into Windows. I don't think I need to edit the menu.lst anymore since I boot into Windows fine it's during XP's load up that Partition Magic takes over and things go wrong. So I believe I either need someway of changing how Partition Magic loads, I couldn't find any related forums to Partition Magic so I'm not quite sure where to go from here. I tryed using the rescue disks but they only allowed me to remove edit add partitions and change which is primrary etc.. it's basically a disk druid utility.

The message was as follows:

xmnt2002 program not found skipping autocheck
autochk program not found skipping authocheck

Then very very very quickly I see what I believe is a blue screen of death.

Thanks again for everyone's help,
Spiros
 
  


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