Mandrake 10.0 Community Killed Windows XP

I have scoured the net to find a solution to no avail.

I installed Mandrake 10.0 on my desktop with no issues. It was installed on my second hard drive while my primary is a windows partition running XP. I installed the Lilo boot loader on my MBR.

Now when I select WINDOWS from Lilo, all I get is a blinking cursor.

I have found similar threads which state to erase Lilo by booting the computer with the Windows XP cd rom and going to the recovery console. I would LOVE to be able to do this, however when I try to boot from my windows cd, I get an error. When I get to the SETUP IS RUNNING WINDOWS I get the blue screen of death stating:

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

I can verify through Linux that my Windows boot.ini file is OK as I made a backup before installing Linux. Fortunately I can still retreive the data from my windows partition as Linux is working just fine, but here are the 3 issues that I have:
[list=1][*]I cannot run Windows from the Lilo boot loader as I get only a blinking curesor[*]I cannot boot from my Windows XP cd rom as I get an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error[*]I do not have a floppy drive to boot to a recovery disk[/list=1]

The only other possible solution I have considered is disconnecting my second hard disk with Linux to see if I could then boot from my Windows XP cd rom.

I want to try to save my Windows installation if possible. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

try the mandrake installation CD. Insert it and boot from it. Then press F2 for more options, and type
rescue
at the prompt. You'll get a menu of things you can do and one of the options should be to restore the original MBR.

(I think it's pressing F2 but read the screen; it will tell you what to do in order to get more options and then what to type to get to the rescue mode).

Thanks quatsch. I'll try it when I get home & post the results.

I recently had some problems with Windows after I installed Mandrake 10 Community as a dual boot on my Win98 machine. I had GRUB installed in the MBR instead of LILO. When I tried to boot into Win98 I got some serious error messages about files not being found. So I booted Win98 into safe mode. There I saw some curiously named directories (folders), which appeared something similar to this:

!$!$!$!$!app

I quickly discovered these folders were actually renamed folders such as: C:/Program Files
C:/Windows/Start Menu

and a few others. Once I "renamed" these folders back to the original, the system booted up fine and I ran Norton WinDoctor to catch other errors. I suspect Mandrake somehow did the renaming

Even if you can't boot into Windows to check this out, you still can access the directories/folders through /mnt/Windows and see if they are ok.

I'll have to double check. I have been into my mnt/Windows directorys and nothing appeared incorrect "at first galnce". If it has to do with incorrectly named folders, I am still up the creek as...

1. Linux cannot write to an ntfs partition.
2. I cannot get to a windowss command prompt.

I hope this is not the case.

to mount NTFS with write permissions do

mount -remount,rw /mnt/windows (or wherever u mounted xp)

hope that worksout for ya

Alie

presemt_arms. Thanks. That is a great solution.

quatsch. Thanks also. Your solution seems to work so far. I need to create a Mandrake boot CD before I try it though. I was busy last night installing a print server so that my wife could print from her XP laptop.

I hope I can put this issue to rest.

np... with 2.6 kernel mounting NTFS in rw is safer ,
i do it with knoppix if i need rw access on works broken xp clients

presemt_arms. I tried to mount my windows xp (which is located at /mnt/windows/ ) and I get the following...

[root@localhost jxk7581]# mount -remount,rw /mnt/windows
mount: invalid option -- e
Usage: mount -V : print version
mount -h : print this help
mount : list mounted filesystems
mount -l : idem, including volume labels
So far the informational part. Next the mounting.
The command is `mount [-t fstype] something somewhere'.
Details found in /etc/fstab may be omitted.
mount -a [-t|-O] ... : mount all stuff from /etc/fstab
mount device : mount device at the known place
mount directory : mount known device here
mount -t type dev dir : ordinary mount command
Note that one does not really mount a device, one mounts
a filesystem (of the given type) found on the device.
One can also mount an already visible directory tree elsewhere:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or move a subtree:
mount --move olddir newdir
A device can be given by name, say /dev/hda1 or /dev/cdrom,
or by label, using -L label or by uuid, using -U uuid .
Other options: [-nfFrsvw] [-o options] [-p passwdfd].
For many more details, say man 8 mount .

it appears that "remount" is not a valid option. Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Well. It seems I'm out of luck. I followed your directions quatsch and restored Windows MBR.

Now when I boot I just get a blinking cursor. No Lilo, no Windows. Nada.

It appears that I may not be able to either recover my existing Windows installation or re-install windows as I get the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

The only thing that I REALLY need to get from windows is my personal folders in Outlook Express.

I have used Kontact to import my Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, etc. But it seems that it did not import my personal foleds which have some information that I would like to keep.

Thus far I'm happy with Mandrake 10.0 & am considering just removing Windows altogether, but I need to try to save what I can first.

Any ideas from anyone are appreciated. Thank you ALL for your excellent feedback.

you should be able to restore lilo with the rescue thing for mandrake.

another thing you can try is get hold of a win95/98 boot disk and boot into DOS. You can then fix the mbr with
fdisk /mbr
(I think this is the command. It gets discussed all the time in the forums so you should just search for the exact syntax). Maybe it'll work.

another thing that comes to mind is whether your windows drive/partition is set as 'active'. I'm not sure about xp but the older versions of windows require the system to be on an active partition. Maybe it's trying to mount your linux partition which it doesn't know how to do. You can boot into linux and use cfdisk from the command line to check. cfdisk is menu driven so you can probably figure it out (you have to be root).

I was easily able to restore Lilo using the Mandrake rescue command.

An issue with the Win 95/98 boot disk is that I don't have a floppy drive.

cfdisk shows my windows partition as:

name: hda1
flags : boot
part type: primary
fs type: ntfs

All appears to be in order.

On a side note, I was able to change to rw access on /mnt/windows/ by logging into root and using konqueror to switch to rw access.

I'm about 1 more try away from just getting rid of windows altogether. I backed up everything last night so I'm prepaired for it.