i had the exact same problem and finally fixed it today after asking many people and trying many things. the thing that finally worked was to delete all of the partitions then run fixmbr (same as fdisk /mbr i'm told). just make sure to boot into linux and back up any data you may want to save.

Hey blackchai,

Thanks for the suggestion! If after clearing the MBR, partitioning and formating if it still doesn't boot... I'll delete the partition, boot into recovery console and fixmbr, or floppy fdisk /mbr.

As far as my data goes... LOL, it's hosed. Nothing that can't be replaced... just time...

Karl

Hello,

Wahoo!

Clearing the MBR, fdisk whole partition and format c: /s worked.

I rebooted my machine and it booted to the dos prompt from the hard drive.

Thanks colnago.

Tomorrow night I'll partition and format my hard drive and install MDK9.2 and WinXP...

Regards,

Karl

Karl,

You might want to switch your IDE controller cabling aroung so that your HDD is setup as Master on the Primary controller.

Then Linux will see it as dev/hda. Windows doesn't care as DOS will assign C: to the first "active" partition of a drive on either controller.

Another thing I found useful when I set up my machine at the office (Triple boot- WinXP, Win2K and MDK9.2) was to free up the space I wanted to allot to Linux and let MDK find and format on it's own.

Just delete the free partition you want to use and don't format. MDK will locate it and offer an oftion to install in the free space.

Another thing. Install XP first. Then, if you allow Linux to install Lilo in the MBR of the drive, Lilo will take over the boot process and should have a pointer Windows which will bring up the Windows XP loader screen.

Good luck.

K, I'm going to boot Mandrake into runlevel 3, then run the DD command, format the entire hard drive. Then reinstall Server 2003..

Wish me luck.

I had the same problem with Mandrake 10.0 Beta 2.
I had 3 partitions winXP on NTFS, old linux on ext3 and swap.
lilo on MBR
I intended to replace my old linux with mdk 10.0 Beta2
I booted with mdk, and selected Custom Partitioning.
It looked like there were a few unpartitioned MB at the end of the disk, so I decided to resize de swap partition to put them to good work.
Everything went fine, Installation completed and the system restarted from HD with mdk 10.
So far so good.
When I wanted to get back to XP, all I got was a blinking cursor at the top left corner of a black screen.
No tool, could make XP boot, not fixboot, not fixmbr not fdisk /mbr from win98
After playing a whole saturday I discovered through linux fdisk, that the partitions overlaped a few cylinders, and I'm sure they were perfectly fine last time I checked.
So my guess is that some tool in the instalation when modifying the partition table, messed it up a little. The only way to get XP to boot again was deleting all the partitions and starting all over again.
Be aware of that.
Also, no problem with Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition.
linuxwarrior

I've post here the same problem on win98.

http://linuxquestions.org/questions/...896#post817896

* the LBA trick does nothing.
* booting from Smart Boot manager disn't helped either.

My problem is that i CAN'T reformat the windows drive because of lotsa install and data ;-<
but i can burn a CD with data.

I have 2 HD (master primary and secondary). I'll try with only one.

I do think Mandrake SHOULD WARN PEOPLE, because i had lot of dual boot but it's the first time with this problem.

Well it seems that the explanation is there :

https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959#c14

"if you do not create new partitions during the installation, but just use an existing one, everything goes fine"

Is this a major problem with MDK 10.0? like 9.2 with the damage Drive thing? mabe they should include a new sticky with every new MDK release of a major problem.

Is there a option to isntall all packages from MDK 10 4 or 5 CDs? It would be cool to not have to need the cds to install packages when u need them, instead have everything aready install.

so if this is problem, how should i install mandrake, if i have 1 drive, should i divide it up while i install windows, then install mandrake to overwrite one of those partitions?

i really don't want to deal with a problem like this...

i have the 9.2 disks, but i don't think i have like 3 hours it's gonna take to install windows, then 9.2 then 10....but i guess if i have to, i will...

I guess the best is to :

1 - have a liveCD (or use tomsrtbt [amazing Linux on floppy]) and create all the partitions (should be quick).
2 - install windows
3 - install mandrake 10.0

Let us know what happen.

how does this effect installing windows?

i think i'm probably gonna:

1. install winxp
2. install 9.2
3. install 10 (wiping out 9.2)

It appears that the problem is related to allowing MDK to "create" the partitions when installing.

Try this:

Let's say you have one HDD 20Gig.

1. Create two fat32 partitions of 10G each.
2. Install XP on the first partition C: allowing XP to convert the partition from Fat32 to NTFS.
3. Install MDK. Select the free Fat32 partition as the destination partition.
4. Lilo will install itself in the MBR of the HDD and overwrite the XP bootloader but include an entry for Windows.

You should then be able to boot to Lilo and select either MDK or XP

It's not necessary to install MDK 9.2 first.

Hello,

If I'm not too late... good luck [SA]Chem!


Capblanc... I think I'll use your methodology to try MDK10.0 again... just not tonight! Which distribution do you recommend? Should CD1 be bootable?

Is MDK10.0 good? Maybe I was too quick... and didn't give it enough of a chance.

I am going to back-up my MBR using mbrwizard.

Regards,

Karl

you mean create them with xp, i don't have any boot disks all i have is the xp cd...

i was thinking of that but wasn't sure how mdk would take to the left over partition

alright - i found a site with a downloadable 98se boot disk - http://www.bootdisk.com/ and now have that , it has fdisk and format on it so i can set all that up...

eidt again, i forgot that fdisk for 98 wouldn't read an 80 gig drive, so i'm just using my xp cd to create to partitions, one will get windows and the other partition will be for mdk (maybe another thrid option when fedora core 2 comes out - unless that's not possible???)