I'm almost at the point of flipping out right now.. I had Linux installed on my machine before, and my bootloader always loaded both windows and linux just fine. Now, I installed mandrake 10.1 cause I havent used linux in a while and wanted a new distro..

It WONT load windows xp.. the partition is there, havent changed it at all. When I choose windows, I get a black screen with messed up text and colored blocks all over it. I'm going crazy.. I've tried changing the bootloader and it still doesnt work... I cannot lose my windows partition, I have too many important files.. Please, somebody help.

If you installed a bootloader with Mdk, it overwrote the previous one, which might be causing the problem. If Mdk is your active Linux partition, post (in Mdk) the output of and tell us which partition Windows is on (hda1, hdb2, etc).

If you're using grub as a bootloader, I can't help you, but there are plenty of other people here who can.

There is a problem with Mandrake 10 and Fedora Core 2 (caused by the 2.6 kernel) which uses the partition table a little differently to windows - I had this exact same problem and it is fairly easy to resolve if it is what I think it is.

I know grub (I learned it because of this problem) so if you are using grub paste the output of /etc/grub.conf (or /boot/grub.conf depending on distro).

If it is the problem with the way the 2.6 kernel messes with the partition table it can be resolved by doing the following as root:

I booted into a Knoppix live-CD to do this to make sure, just su to root and it will give you the correct access, and this only applies if you installed to bootloader to the MBR of hda.

I highly recommend pasting the contents of your lilo.conf or grub.conf file first before you try that though - even though it isn't damaging, It's worthwhile making sure if it isn't something much simpler.

Here is my lilo.conf output. I do not gave grub installed, but I did switch to it via the mandrake control panel at one point and I got the same errors with trying to load windows.



default="linux"
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=ht splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=ht"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda

Bump.. seriously, I'm in trouble here..

try changing table=/dev/hda to root=/dev/hda

HTH

Mathew