Can't reinstall Linux booter because of error

Cinematography · 04-29-2005, 09:09 PM

My Linux booter was uninstalled after I reinstalled Windows XP. In an effort to bring back my Linux booter, I put in my Linux Mandrake 10.1 DVD. When it got to the partitioning section of the upgrade, this error came up:

Quote:

An error occured mounting partition /dev/hda1 in directory /mnt/
mnt/win_c failed (no such file or directory).

I think this may have happened because I formatted a Windows partition that Linux was referring to. The partition was originally FAT32, and now it's NTFS.

Does anyone know how I could get the Linux booter back?

Simon Bridge · 04-29-2005, 10:03 PM

Yeah that would do it ... you will have to stick your bootloader somewhere else. (Or repartition the drive for a better install) This sort of thing is why it is sometimes good to have a boot partition.

<pulls hair> Oh why oh why reinstall XP - don't you realise win dosn't play well with the other children <rant over> I feel better now.

Cinematography · 04-30-2005, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Simon Bridge
Yeah that would do it ... you will have to stick your bootloader somewhere else. (Or repartition the drive for a better install) This sort of thing is why it is sometimes good to have a boot partition.

<pulls hair> Oh why oh why reinstall XP - don't you realise win dosn't play well with the other children <rant over> I feel better now.

Thank you for the suggestion. And no, Windows XP doesn't like playing nice with other operating systems. LOL. I just learned that the hard way. I think converting it to Fat32 should do the trick. Thank you again for pointing me in the right direction.

Simon Bridge · 05-01-2005, 01:41 AM

You want to stick your bootloader in a fat partition because... you want windows to have easy access to it????? Why not repartition as ext?

Cinematography · 05-01-2005, 12:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Simon Bridge
You want to stick your bootloader in a fat partition because... you want windows to have easy access to it?????

I got everything working now. Windows XP loads fine and Linux Mandrake 10.1 loads fine. However, the only way I could get everything working again was by converting the Windows XP partition to FAT32.

Ugg...

Quote:

Why not repartition as ext?

When I installed Linux, C: was a FAT32 backup partition. When I formatted C:, installed Windows XP on it, and made it a NTSC partition - Linux wouldn't boot anymore, even though it was on a completely different partition. Why Linux just can't make the needed adjustments on it's own is beyond me.

Simon Bridge · 05-02-2005, 02:29 AM

That's easy - even though linux was in a different place, the bootloader wasn't. The win install messed the bootloader up. Reemeber - linux and ntfs have issues. Had you not trusted Bill Gates, and kept unchanged anything that did not absolutely have to be changed then you would have been fine.

A way of avoiding this sort of thing is to create a special boot partition to mount at /boot during the installation phase. The bootloader goes there and will, usually, not get overwritten or otherwise messed with when you change the other partitions around. (Though it still needs to know if you've changed the location of the OS's...)

However, Windows is notorious for riding roughshod over the other occupants of the computer. Often just by commandeering other partitions for swap space or writing temp files. This is not the sort of thing any OS can automatically correct for. (You just try repartitioning your drive with linux and seeing what windows thinks of that! I don't know about XP, but it messes up my Win98 very badly - my lin is barely affected at all.)