So the only way to fix this problem is to uninstall Mandrake 10, and reinstall 9.2?
Or wipe out the hard drive and reinstall Windows?

I'm sorry I even bothered trying Mandrake...

I wiped out everything. Reformmated my whole harddrive. Then installed xp and then 9.2 and then installed a fresh copy of 10 where 9.2 was.

Is your XP partition on FAT32 or NTFS?

Its NTFS...

Crap, was hoping it had something to do with them testing XP on NTFS and not FAT32.

My XP partition is FAT32.

I found out how to fix it.

When your computer starts up, go into your bios and configure your primary hard drive from "auto" to LBA:

Thats it.

Shame some people formatted there entire computer over this...

Hello all,

Well I'm no Linux expert... so I'm frustrated to find myself caught in this bear-trap. I've been dual-booting between WinXP Pro SP1 and MDK9.2. I try Linux about every six months, and usually walk away thinking that I'm not quiet ready for it, or it for me. Well MDK9.2 was a real eye-opener. I think it's great and can see myself using it more and more. I recently played most of a LAN party of UT2004 demo using MDK, and couldn't see a difference. Great job of coding...

Well anyways, I decided to install MDK10.0. The WinXP was on a NTFS partition. I deleted the partitan that MDK9.2 was on and redivided and installed MDK10.0. I found it to be quiet "raw", and wasn't suitably impressed (I really like MDK9.2), so I decided to boot into WinXP for a while and do some other stuff... you guessed it, it wouldn't boot.

Popped-in WinXP disk, booted disk, recovery console tried Fixmbr... no luck. Win98 startup disk, fdisk /mbr... no luck. WinXP re-install... no luck. Booted Win98 startup disk, scandisk C: found errors in 2nd copy of MBR copied over. Ran again, same message same errors... no luck. FDisk deleted partitions...tried to make all one partition getting weird three partition that I could not delete. Did clean install of WinXP deleting off partitions and installing new (bye-bye data...), finished install getting same "no operating system" message that a number of other folks mentioned.

Just found this thread... before didn't know of this issue... so I got to thinking hardware problem... changed IDE cable... started to think that I had a damaged hard drive since the issue with the MBR was bizarre. Finally since WinXP would not install and boot, I installed MDK9.2 and it is working fine.

When I try and do a fresh install of WinXP it can not deal with the boot loader or what-have-you on the MBR and so the OS won't boot. The boot loader seems to be the new one from MDK10.0 (first item listed is "Linux Enterprise" or something like that).

So how do I straighten this up and get back to a clean dual-boot WinXP and MDK9.2 ???

Kind regards,

Karl

Hmmm
Was that really all?

Might be a bug then. Or???

However, just to give some more info
Only dualboot with window$ for me is on my laptop

Partitioned the disk in 50/50
Installed Window$ using the "restore CD" that came with the lappy
Then I installed MDK 10 community
Went on with no problems. (Well ATI could've provided me with drivers which they don't. So am using generic drivers and they are working more then less with my Radeon 9600 M ).

Then fired up my "server". Ran into problems directly.
This was the first time ever with MDK I ran into installation problems.
And I've used MDK since June -98 ( + a bunch of other distributions )
However, I did not have any problems with the bootloaders. Server using GRUB, lappy using LILO.

Hope this "problem" will be documented and solved ASAP!

With Kind Regards
An "not wannabe pro since beeing one seems so boring not learning anything new"

Hey all,

Okay the 'war' is on.

I'm currently reinstalling WinXP. I've divided my 80GB WD 7200RPM 8mb cache hard drive in half. I'm using the install process to partition and setup WinXP first.

I have two machines... so I'll post back as I go.

Perhaps I mistyped the commands before or something wonky like that.

Anyone have any suggestions of things to try?

Maybe install WinXP, and then install MDK9.2 (even through XP won't boot)... maybe MDK will install or configure the bootloader to load WinXP?

Regards,

Karl

Hey all,

Well finished install of WinXP, rebooted. Get's to OS load time and I get the message.... "Error loading operating system".

I'll reboot, go into recovery console and try the command "fixmbr"

Karl

How many partitions did you have on your HDD before you installed Mandrake 10?

On what partition was Windows XP installed? What drive letter?

Did you use an existing partition to install Mandrake or did you create new partitions during the install? i.e. root, swap etc?

Did you move the XP partition or create a partition before the XP partition?

It is possible that the problem is as simple as editing your Boot.ini file in the root of your XP installation.

Hey,

Interesting... this time when I entered the recovery console and entered "fixmbr" it replied:

*** CAUTION ***
This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot record.

FIXMBR may damage your partition tables if you proceed.

This could cause all the partitions on the current hard drive to become inaccessible.

If you are not having problems accessing your drive, do not continue.

Are you sure you want to write a new MBR?

(y)

Writing new master boot record on physical drive
Device\Harddisk0\Partition0.

The new master boot record has been successfully written.

Just for the heck of it I ran "fixboot" too. It reported that it was successful.

On reboot, I get the same message... "Error loading operating system."


ARGH!


Karl

just wanted to say That i had no problems booting to winxp after the mandrake 10 install.. even formatted XP and went back to 2000pro

thanks
trey

Hey trey85stang,

Can you post your signature (hardware, software...)?

I'm curious... is this because of nforce2 board, WD hard drive, etc?

Karl