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08-27-2003, 01:46 AM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Rep:
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uh-oh... lost XP?
ok, it's been a while since i wanted to even venture back into XP... i had resized the partitions during the install so XP would have 16 gb, and mandrake linux would have 22 gb. well today i needed to go to my school's website, which only runs on netscape 4.5 but not any newer than 6.0, or MSIE. i rebooted, selected windows... the computer was loading, then restarted itself. so i popped in the WinXP cd, and try to restore... it says to type exit. i type exit, it restarts... and windows is still not there. so i reboot from cd again, and it says i have 4 parts of my hd... i know i split it into 2 - one for windows, one for linux. what's going on here? did i FUBAR major and lose all my info on windows? how do i know which partition is which - linux did not tell me the drive letters... apparently i have c, d, e, and g. what's going on here?
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08-27-2003, 01:55 AM
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#2
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Senior Member
Registered: Jun 2003
Distribution: Debian/other
Posts: 2,104
Rep:
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Open a shell in Mandrake
su
root password
fdisk -l /dev/hdx
were x is the channel your drive is on.
It'll give you a list of the respective partitions
There is always the final option of re-installing the Windows bootloader. - if you wanted to do that then pop in your 1st Mandrake cd -
Press F1
then type
rescue
youll see a menu in which you can choose to re-install the Windows bootloader - or LILO if your having problems with Mandrake
Last edited by Skyline; 08-27-2003 at 01:59 AM.
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08-27-2003, 02:08 AM
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#3
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Original Poster
Rep:
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ok i just did the fdisk -l /dev/hda
"/dev/hda1 * 1 2155 17310006 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2156 4870 21808237+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 2156 2919 6136798+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 2920 2982 506016 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 2983 4870 15165328+ 83 Linux"
am i correct in thinking hda1 and hda2 belong to windows?
would it be easier, since i am sorta in between being a newbie/almost intermediate user of linux/unix, to reinstall the windows bootloader?
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08-27-2003, 02:13 AM
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#4
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Denver, CO
Distribution: CentOS, Debian
Posts: 825
Rep:
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well, hda1 is your windows partition, and the * signifies that it's the bootable partition. hda2 is somewhat misleading, it doesn't really exist - you'll notice that the next three fit inside it when you look at the sectors. it's an extended partition, and the others are logical (since you can only have 4 primary partitions, if you want more than that you have to subdivide)
anyway, that's somewhat off topic. you may have a problem in your etc/lilo.conf file. if you posted that here we might be able to find a way to solve the problem without reinstalling windows bootloader. otherwise, that's not really all that difficult, and once you have xp booting again you can reinstall LILO pretty easily too.
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08-27-2003, 04:27 AM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Birmingham, UK
Distribution: Ubuntu,Debian
Posts: 381
Rep:
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I had a similar problem with Red Hat 8 when i was experimenting with running a web server before I put it on a dedicated machine. I am running Windows XP and it wouldnt boot. I mounted the windows partition from Red Hat and found that nearly all of my files had dissapeared. Luckily I had a backup and had to reinstall windows! I would check to see if your files are there first!
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08-27-2003, 08:11 AM
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#6
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Florida
Distribution: DEBIAN 3.x
Posts: 34
Rep:
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I am a newbie myself (back me up here vets) but, if you resized an existing xp partition you may have in essence wiped it. Now, Assuming you installed XP after you did the partitioning it, it is entirely possible you borked the xp mbr. If your xp install is good then boot with your xp cd (make a linux boot disk first!!!) go to the recovery console, instead of typing exit, type the following:
fixmbr [ENTER]
that will re-write the master boot record with what xp expects to see.... um, come to think of it, xp should have asked you which winodws OS you want to log into first. Sorta sounds like you borked the xp os when you resized the partitions.
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08-27-2003, 09:35 AM
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#7
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Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Birmingham, UK
Distribution: Ubuntu,Debian
Posts: 381
Rep:
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Why will resizing partitions mess up the XP partition? I just dont get it...
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08-27-2003, 02:09 PM
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#8
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Senior Member
Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Distribution: RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, SUSE
Posts: 1,403
Rep:
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Quote:
Why will resizing partitions mess up the XP partition?
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It depends on the type of partition.
If you want to resize a FAT32 partition, there is no problem.
However, Linux does not know how to correctly resize a NTFS partition.
So, it may be better to install winXP on a FAT32 partition.
WinXP will not have the secure file system setup, but anyways, windows is not even secure to begin with 
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08-27-2003, 04:01 PM
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#9
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Original Poster
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally posted by mcd
well, hda1 is your windows partition, and the * signifies that it's the bootable partition. hda2 is somewhat misleading, it doesn't really exist - you'll notice that the next three fit inside it when you look at the sectors. it's an extended partition, and the others are logical (since you can only have 4 primary partitions, if you want more than that you have to subdivide)
anyway, that's somewhat off topic. you may have a problem in your etc/lilo.conf file. if you posted that here we might be able to find a way to solve the problem without reinstalling windows bootloader. otherwise, that's not really all that difficult, and once you have xp booting again you can reinstall LILO pretty easily too.
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ok here is a copy of my /etc/lilo.conf file...
boot="/dev/hda"
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout="100"
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
vga="ask"
image="/boot/vmlinuz"
label="linux"
root="/dev/hda5"
initrd="/boot/initrd.img"
append="devfs=mount acpi=off quiet"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=off failsafe"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe
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08-27-2003, 04:02 PM
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#10
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Original Poster
Rep:
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also, as long as i run into lilo (how can i make it wait, say, 20 or 30 seconds?) and i am able to choose which OS i want to run, that will be great. the way it is set is for 7 seconds i think...
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08-27-2003, 04:06 PM
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#11
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Original Poster
Rep:
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Quote:
Originally posted by Bullzeye
I am a newbie myself (back me up here vets) but, if you resized an existing xp partition you may have in essence wiped it. Now, Assuming you installed XP after you did the partitioning it, it is entirely possible you borked the xp mbr. If your xp install is good then boot with your xp cd (make a linux boot disk first!!!) go to the recovery console, instead of typing exit, type the following:
fixmbr [ENTER]
that will re-write the master boot record with what xp expects to see.... um, come to think of it, xp should have asked you which winodws OS you want to log into first. Sorta sounds like you borked the xp os when you resized the partitions.
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XP was preinstalled when i bought this computer a year and half ago. i already have a linux boot disk... if i enter fixmbr, will that rewrite the mbr to what it originally was (ex. the restore program in XP, which restores your HD to the way it was at a certain date), would that overwrite LM?
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08-27-2003, 04:29 PM
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#12
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Senior Member
Registered: Jun 2003
Distribution: Debian/other
Posts: 2,104
Rep:
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Change this line
timeout="100"
to
200 for 20 seconds
300 for 30 seconds etc ect ect
remeber to run
/sbin/lilo
as root user from a shell to make the changes take effect
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08-27-2003, 04:38 PM
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#13
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Original Poster
Rep:
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ok, thanks skyline... i put in 250, for 25 seconds...
i'm gonna restart and try the rescue-fixmbr commands... wish me luck!
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08-27-2003, 04:40 PM
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#14
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Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Birmingham, UK
Distribution: Ubuntu,Debian
Posts: 381
Rep:
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good luck 
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08-27-2003, 06:04 PM
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#15
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Member
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Philly, PA
Distribution: Slackware
Posts: 81
Original Poster
Rep:
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ok, i did it, but it said it was going to install windows bootloader... i kinda want to keep lilo... any way i could access the data on the windows mbr from linux so i can save it before reinstalling the windows bootloader?
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