Can NTLDR load a Mandrake linux 10.1 boot sector from a boot sector image file from a Windows XP NTFS Partition when using a Serial ATA HDD?????

I have tried the proper way to do this editing boot.ini etc.. etc... several times at first I thought it was the bugs in the 10.0 distro installer so I tried 10.1 and it actually recognized my Serial ATA drives as sdXX accordingly (in my case sda and sdb) instead of /dev/hde like 10.0 did. I partitioned /dev/sda using the Mandrake partitioning program in the installer and it made my linux partitions "sda5" (EXT3) and "sda6" (swap) respectively.

Lilo.conf seems to be fine after a small edit removing unwanted drives and partitions. In lilo.conf... boot=/dev/sda5.... and everything else looking fine. I reran lilo (/sbin/lilo) after the edit, then made my boot sector image and put it in the root of my NTFS partition of my windows XP drive (c:\) and edited boot.ini accordingly to point to the "linux.bin" file I created with the dd........command but everytime I select to boot linux it either locks for about 5-10 seconds and reboots my pc OR locks for 5-10 seconds and says the following : Windows could not start beacuse the following file is missing or corrupt:<windows root> \system32\hal.dll. Please reinstall a copy of the above file. So im totally confused on whats wrong someone PLEASE try to HELP ME FIGURE OUT WHATS WRONG PLEASE?

I would never use any microsoft bootloader especially since they have an extreme bias against Linux systems. The best way to dual-boot is to let LILO handle the booting process and keep the two OSs on seperate harddrives (not just seperate partitions).

http://roofrabbit.com/xwindualboot.html

Hi there,

I use NTLDR to dual boot XP/Mandrake with LILO (for some reason it doesn't work with GRUB). To create my bootsector for Linux I use:

dd if=/dev/hdd5 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

Now mount a windows formatted floppy and copy the file bootsect.lnx to the root of your C:\ drive in WinXP (IT WILL ONLY WORK FROM THE C:\ DRIVE - THIS IS AN NTLDR PROBLEM)

Edit your boot.ini via the System Control Panel.

Add a line:

c:\bootsect.lnx="Mandrake Linux 10.1CE"

Don't forget to add a newline at the end of the file when saving.

Hopefully when you restart, you will have two boot ooptions, and both will work.

themacmeister