Problem dual booting.....Windows does not boot
 

Hi All,
I have three partitions on my machine
1st partion----windows C drive (11 Gb)
2nd partition---Redhat Linux 9 (15 Gb)
3rd partition---Windows data (55 Gb)

Since two months everything was working fine. But suddenly I get this wierd problem, where Windows XP does not boot and the error it says is

Booting .......DOS
rootnoverify(hd0,4)
chainloader +1
and then it hangs there and nothing happens. Please help me how to correct this.
Thanks
Raj

Did you change anything? Anything at all? It sounds like your lilo.conf (or grub.conf) is pointing to the wrong directory for windows. In lilo.conf or grub.conf all drive assignments are realative to hd0,0. If you used partition magic to make a new partition or delete an old one, this sort of trouble can come up.

If windows is on your first partition, try rootnoverify(hd0,0) chainloader +1

I did not change anything at all. And I tried changing grub.conf to rootnoverify(hd0,0) and again instead of giving the error as rootnoverify(hd0,4) it gave the error rootnoverify(hd0,0) and i did not use partition magic either.

When you boot into linux, type fdisk -l as root

That will show you the partition on which the Windows reside.
for instance /dev/hda1 == (hd0,0) and /dev/hdb3 == (hd1,2)

Check grub.conf if that is the rootnoverify(hdx,x) your grub.conf is set to boot into windows. if not. Change it to the one you have found out with fdisk.

This should do the trick. If it already is the way it should be, I'm out of ideas.

You could try recovery with Windows CD.

I've got a similar problem - the annoying thing being that dual-booting *was* working on this machine until I changed distros. I have WinXP on one HD (hdb) and Linux on the other (hda). I did have Mandrake 10CE loaded, which used Lilo and worked fine. Then I decided to install SuSE 9.1, and while Linux boots okay, I get the message:

root (hd1,1)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader +1

fdisk confirms that Windows is on hdb2 (there seems to be a Dell partition on hdb1 which I didn't know about before).

I tried changing to Lilo - no joy (hangs after saying 'Loading Windows'). I changed back to Grub and tried changing the seeting to 'rootnoverify', but that didn't help either. Alas, I need Windows on this machine, so I might be foreced back to Mandrake...

Hey Guys,

This has been one common problems among the Users who try to dual boot their system.

There has been many versions to this problem:

1. First Installed Linux - then installed Windows - Windows' own bootloader overwrites, the linux boot loader (Lilo or Grub).

Solution:
(a). Try to boot into Linux with a boot floppy(if U have one, always better to have one).
Reinstall the boot loader.
(b). Use a third party bootloader program like Boot Magic.

2. The case reported by Raj Verma.

Raj, Have u changed the IDE slot. i.e., have changed the Data Cable from One slot to another in the Mother Board. Then the Name of the harddisk might have changed.

Grub is a multiboot load agent. It will try to boot OSes that support Multiboot directly.
But OSes which doesnt, it gives control to the respective boot loaders ( Eg. Windows). This is called Chain Loading.

The Commands:
rootnoverify
chainloader +1

Note: If U run the windows recovery CD U still might loose Linux.

In this case correcting the grub.conf file should suffice.

It wud be helpful for me raj, if U could give us the output of.

fdisk -l /dev/hd"X"

Regards
Manoj
Hope this helps

I recommend to those who wish to run more than one OS on a single hard drive, the following:

>>Visit www.vmware.com and purchase the VMware Workstation, either for Linux or Windows, depending on which OS is your primary
>>This allows you to run mulitple instances of various OSs on one disk without ever having to reboot (usually)

The price is a little steep if you aren't a developer or avid user of multiple operating systems, but they do offer academic pricing. IMO, it's well worth it. Give it a try folks, and do share comments.

Its great mistake, if U go for Proprietary software like VmWare, if U have so much for Free(Free as in Freedom) from the GNU/Linux.

I will be a bit tough to start with, U may lose data, partitions, OSes. But finaly when U achieve it Urself, there will be a great sense of satisfaction.

Hey Raj, I suggest U try to do it Urself and enjoy this

Regards
Neo