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Old 09-24-2007, 04:37 PM   #1
lt2007
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Registered: Sep 2007
Location: St Louis, MO
Distribution: Slackware, SuSE, XUbuntu
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Grub help - XP won't boot anymore


I have no idea how she did this, but a friend of mine repartitioned her laptop this weekend and installed Ubuntu (dual-boot). Problem is, Windows won't boot anymore (saying something about hal.dll being missing).

Her fdisk output is really odd, and I don't know how to translate it well to grub in the first place, so I am hoping that somebody here can help fix her grub config file? This is what she sent me:

Code:
$ cat menu.lst | grep -v \#
default         0
timeout         10

title           Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=f84949bd-0bf4-49ef-a420-6ae8488621a8 ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
quiet
savedefault

title           Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=f84949bd-0bf4-49ef-a420-6ae8488621a8 ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic

title           Ubuntu, memtest86+
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

title           Other operating systems:
root

title           Windows XP Media Center Edition
root            (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1
Code:
$ cat fstab
Device  Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1           10569       11801     9904072+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2   *           1       10568    84881836    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           12068       12161      755055    5  Extended
/dev/sda4           11802       12067     2136645   83  Linux
/dev/sda5           12089       12161      586341   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6           12068       12088      168619+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
What do you think needs to be done so that XP will boot again?
TIA!
 
Old 09-24-2007, 06:36 PM   #2
Cyhaxor
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There is not needed to fix anything in Linux.. You just probably need the hal.dll file in (Windows main driver letter):\windows\system32 to get your windows OS working Just google it and download it
 
Old 09-24-2007, 06:56 PM   #3
redbot
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Registered: Sep 2007
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I had this very same problem a long while back. I got around it by re-installing XP, though I don't know if that's an acceptable solution to you. You may want to try googling with terms like "windows linux dual boot hal.dll". It turned up a bunch of hits for me, including these promising candidates: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm
http://www.busyashell.com/blog/artic...oot-with-linux

As always, be extra careful when mucking with parition or boot stuff! Let us know how things go.
 
Old 09-25-2007, 10:09 AM   #4
lt2007
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Registered: Sep 2007
Location: St Louis, MO
Distribution: Slackware, SuSE, XUbuntu
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But Windows didn't have any problems booting before the Linux install, and reinstalling it is kind of out of the question.

And oh, forgot to mention - hal.dll is still there in system32, so I don't think it's a Windows problem...

Edit: ok, nvm, she's reinstalling XP. Thanks everyone for your help!

Last edited by lt2007; 09-25-2007 at 01:51 PM.
 
Old 09-26-2007, 08:40 PM   #5
redbot
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Registered: Sep 2007
Posts: 19

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Yes, XP didn't have any trouble for me before I installed Linux, either. I think the install process changed something on the partition level on the disks, in a way that Windows has trouble coping with.

Anyway, you may have to re-install GRUB to the MBR once you're done. You'll need some kind of Linux disk to boot off and get into a command line. Ubuntu/Kubuntu and Knoppix work great for this. You'll need to run the grub shell, and run commands something like this:
grub> setup (hd0,1)
grub> install (hd0)
BEFORE YOU DO, though, read the instructions here http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...-natively.html
They will help figure out exactly what (hd_) arguments to use, as it depends on your paritions and hard disks.

As more background on the problem: I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I know for a while there was a problem with a lot of the Linux installers disk partition utility (disk druid, maybe?) that had a slightly different notion of partition tables, and caused problems for Windows after creating Linux partitions. The old school fdisk didn't have this problem.

The good news is that repairing the information (MBR, if I remember right) made both Linux and Windows happy.
 
Old 09-27-2007, 10:26 AM   #6
lt2007
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Sep 2007
Location: St Louis, MO
Distribution: Slackware, SuSE, XUbuntu
Posts: 3

Original Poster
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Thanks redbot

What ended up happening is something related to that odd partition scheme, and the fact that Gateway's new laptops all have SATA hard drives. The WinXP recovery console doesn't have the right drivers to find the hard drives, so that doesn't work. And reinstalling XP from off-the-shelf CDs doesn't work either, for the same reason (it's the scenario where you need to hit F6 to install additional drivers, RAID or SATA, etc, but XP (and Vista, apparently?!) still insists on looking for those drivers on a floppy disc. You can't make it look at a USB drive. Computers don't come with floppy drives anymore, especially not laptops! Come into the 21st century, Microsoft!!!11 >_<)

*ahem*

What she ended up doing was wiping the drive, deleting all the partitions, repartitioning with gparted to a more intuitive scheme, ripping the XP disc to .iso, opening that with an ISO editor, following the instructions for adding SATA drivers into the XP install disc itself, and reinstalling that way. Then she reinstalled Ubuntu, and let it use Grub on the MBR. XP's still not perfect, but it's usable again
 
  


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