Hello All,

I am a v. new user to Linux and Mandrake. I installed Mandrake without any problems but on rebooting and trying to boot W2K using lilo, there was an error saying "missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe."

Before i installed linux this was how my partitions were:
C:\[FAT32] - formerly a windows XP partition but XP was removed before linux install. The boot.ini, ntldr etc files reside there.
D:\[NTFS] - WIN2K

As i still had data on the C drive, i told mandrake to resize the partition during install so that linux could fit in the free space. Now my partitions look like this from the konsole

> fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20003880960 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38760 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 17269 8703544+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 17270 38760 10831464 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 17270 23469 3124768+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 28449 38760 5196996 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda7 23470 24484 511528+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda8 24485 28448 1997824+ 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order

I thought that maybe the problem was my boot.ini file now pointing to the wrong partition so i edited the file to point to the right partion for win2k but no success.

Here's also my lilo.conf and boot.ini files below. Is there something i have missed? How can i fix this?

Thanks in advance!



# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/uk.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=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7 splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk
label="263-7"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7 splash=silent"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

[boot loader]
timeout =30
default =multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINNT

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

boot from your windows xp cd and go to the recovery console.
then type "bootcfg /rebuild" to repair it. hope this helps.

sporadic235,


I have fixed on problem but here comes another!

Unfortunately i didn't have an xp rescue disk and i couldn't boot from my cd rom uning the win2k disk. I managed to have the W2k setup disks on floppy and used that to fix the mbr and then afterwards copy a new boot.ini file pointing to the right partition. Now thought it will only boot to the windows os. I also made the fatal mistake of not making a boot floppy for Mandrake during install! Is it just easier to redo the installation of Mandrake linux or can i still save the situation!


Thanks

well, if it's just a fresh install, i advise you reinstall again but this time, choose grub as the boot loader. it's easier to configure grub than lilo. one setback is that the grub package of mandrake is not so appealing as the one that fedora has.

So I guess MDK's version of grub does not support graphical menus?

on the windows partitions ACK! you should have used the built in partitiion software inside win 2k, resized the partition from there, i have found that when resizing windows partitions with mandrake it usually chews up your windows boot files, And make sure you always install win2k or winxp first before you install any linux distro...anyways hoped that helped