SLED 10/Windows XP SP3 Dual-Boot Error 13

Corey Hansen · 04-02-2009, 11:20 AM

Hi all,

I've got a laptop that I'm attempting to dual-boot SLED 10 and XP on. I'm very new to Linux and have made a couple different attempts at getting this to work. After my initial install everything seemed fine. I logged into my Windows build today and noticed that my wireless was off. After enabling it, I decided to restart to ensure that it would stick(this is a test build for a very large distribution) and now I get Error 13 when attempting to boot to Windows.

Code:

rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

My menu.1st looks like this:

Code:

title Windows
      rootnoverify (hd0)
      chainloader (hd0,0)+1

GParted lists my partitions as this:

Code:

/dev/sda1   unknown   39.06 GiB
/dev/sda2   reiserfs  64.71 GiB
/dev/sda4   fat32      5.02 GiB
/dev/sda3   linux-swap 3.00 GiB

Sda1 is an NTFS partition for XP. 2 is SLED. 4 is a shared partition between the two OS's for documents and such.

If you can't already tell, I know very little about what I 'm doing. Any help would be greatly appreciated and if possible, explanation of what it all means would be great too.

Thanks

Duck2006 · 04-02-2009, 11:33 AM

Try changing this,

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

To this,

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader +1

thorkelljarl · 04-02-2009, 11:34 AM

I won't explain but you can start by reading here.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/beginner/toc.html

Corey Hansen · 04-02-2009, 01:37 PM

Thanks so much for your replies on this problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duck2006

Try changing this,

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

To this,

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader +1

I gave that a try and now instead of giving me the error, it just flashes some text way to fast to read and sends me back to the OS selection screen.

@ thorkelljarl
Thanks for the guide link. I will read through it and see what I can learn.

Corey Hansen · 04-02-2009, 04:41 PM

By smacking the pause/break button in sync with enter(a little hard when using the Fn button to hit pause) and trying it a few hundred times I think I got the unknown message.

Code:

rootnoverify (hd0)
chainloader +1

GRUB Loading stage1.5



GRUB loading. please wait...

Initializing gfx code...
static memory: 0x3c020 - 0x63f00
     malloc 0: 0x4df70 - 0x63f00
     malloc 1: 0x200000 - 0x300000
     malloc 2: 0x0 - 0x0
     malloc 3: 0x0 - 0x0

After that it cuts back to the OS selection screen. There's no error that I can seem to capture. Any ideas?

Thanks

Duck2006 · 04-02-2009, 04:53 PM

Some info on grub.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

The line

rootnoverify (hd0)

Should be set to the partition that the has the / root in it.

So from your lay out try,

rootnoverify (hd0,1)

Corey Hansen · 04-02-2009, 05:37 PM

Okay...so now I've really got myself into trouble. I went ahead and tried your suggestion but got the same results. Then I started reading the GRUB manual and tried a few more things. I ended up with this:

Code:

title Windows      
    unhide (hd0,0)
    hide (hd0,1)
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    chainloader +1
    makeactive
    boot

I used the unhide/hide command because I thought that maybe the extra fat partition was causing problems. I had read that having other Windows primary partitions sometimes causes problems. I also started using hd(0,0) because according to the manual, GRUB counts up from 0. That would mean my NTFS partition is partition 0 rather than 1.

Anyway, after changing the menu.1st to the afore mentioned example I received this lovely error:

Code:

Error loading operating system

This comes up right after POST. I'm guessing I'm out of luck but I figured I'd pitch to you first. Is there any way to pop in the SUSE Live CD and maybe bring it back to life, or is it a total rebuild?

Thanks

yancek · 04-02-2009, 08:41 PM

Your menu.lst entry for windows should be:

Quote:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

You can put the (hd0,0) after chainloader if you want but should not need it/ Need a space after 'rootnoverify'.

burninGpi · 04-02-2009, 09:11 PM

Add the makeactive command to the Windows boot entry:

Code:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Corey Hansen · 04-07-2009, 01:24 PM

Thanks for all your input. I finally had to wipe it and start over. Works fine now though. Again, I appreciate everyone helping me out and I'll definitely stay active here.