[Terry]

This is a copy of what I've just posted on the Linux Format forums. I know this is about as off topic as you can get on an RPG forum, and I'm sorry about that, but I'm really desperate for some quick help in getting this sorted out. I've been working on an game for months, and I stand to lose it at the moment. I know there's a few linux gurus lurking about here, so hopefully somebody here will be able to help me out.


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Ok, I've just messed up my computer really bad, and I really, really need to get it back the way it was. Here's the situation:

I've only ever got Linux Format twice, this month's with SuSE and Slackware, and a few months ago with a Knoppix ISO on the DVD. I had Knoppix installed to my hard disk a few months ago just to play about with it, and everything was fine, though I didn't really use it. So eventually I just edited lilo.conf to start Windows XP as default in LILO after a 5 seconds.

This was all fine until I thought I'd try out SuSE, to see what it was like. Good news is that I really like it, bad news is that now, WinXP won't boot.

Basically, if you choose Windows from LILO (the SuSE one), the screen goes blank, the text 'Loading Windows' is displayed in the top left corner of the screen, but everything is frozen - there's no hard disk activity, the computer doesn't seem to be doing anything.

After trying literally all day to fix it, I decided that the problem was with SuSE, so I fdisked the Linux Swap and main partitions clean, and reinstalled Knoppix the way I had it.

This is the the problem though: Even from the LILO menu from the Knoppix installation, I get exactly the same problem.

I know the WinXP installation is on /dev/hda1, and I've tried looking through the lilo configuration for some clue of what's happened, but I honestly don't know. I can't get WinXP to boot up, and there's some really important files that I need to get from it. (another minor problem - my CD Burner wouldn't work from SuSE, so I couldn't backup from there, even though my files seem to be intact.)

Please, Please, Please help me out!
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[Bjorn]

You can erase your master boot record (MBR) with fdisk using a Win98 startup disk for example, that should remove lilo. If WinXP still won't boot, you can be fairly sure it's the WinXP install that is broken.

That won't mean all is lost. The next thing you can try, is to mount your WinXP drive (/dev/hda1 you mentioned) after you boot in Linux. Linux is able to read both FAT and NTFS so you should then be able to copy the necessary files over to another drive. That'd allow you to fix your WinXP install (ie: reinstall, and make that on a FAT, you can change it later to NTFS anyway), then boot Linux again, and copy the files over to WinXP again (Linux can write to FAT).

I hope this'll give you enough information to get underway, or at least help you get somewhere.

[Mandrake]

I'm guessing you did the foolish thing and did a dual partition (foolish I say because getting a 2-4gb old hard-drive to stick into a computer as a linux test drive should be simple for any geek worth his caliber). Did you reformat your entire drive? If not, can you mount the original drive in Linux? If this is the case, the easiest solution would be to insert a new hard drive, format said hard-drive in XP, and then get XP to open the partition that is still formatted for windows. This way, instead of using LILO (or even earasing it) you can use BIOS to choose what you want to boot too. And the XP hard drive then doesn't have to be all that big, either, just big enough to hold XP.

But if you can't mount the drive, most likely you'll never see that information again.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Mandrake]

i just found out that this is a problem with the 2.6 kernel and it's bootloader.

Google found this which seems to have a fix:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/23/2004/06/4/196503
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Bjorn]

Really, a dual partition is anything but foolish and most of the time less troublesome that using two hard disks, which you'd also need to have in the first place (both my laptop and my PC only have one). I dual boot in Linux and WinXP on both systems without any problems, and am using lilo and the 2.6 kernel. I'm not denying that there might be a problem in some configurations though (I suspect some version of lilo to be the culprit, but that will probably have been fixed).

Also, I'm pretty sure Linux needs a bootloader like lilo or grub installed. So whether you're going to use the BIOS to choose which hard disk to boot from or not, you're still going to have to have one of those installed to boot in Linux. The whole point of removing lilo was just to check if WinXP would still boot itself, if it doesn't want to boot without lilo, it's its own problem instead of lilo's.

[Terry]

[Bjorn]

Sorry, don't have a clue about your second problem. Next to all the MBR and check whatever tools you mentioned, you might just want to try removing and re-adding the partition itself, which you could try with FDISK. That might solve any problem that crept into your partition table. Still is weird though.

[Mandrake]

it is foolish if you have any data on that hard drive you wish to keep. If you dload an unstable version, or don't use Disk Druid (or insert any of the other 5,000 linux disk manager here) properly, you could lose that inforamtion.

Dual hard drive makes much more sense to me.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Terry]

[Bjorn]

[Terry]

Em - when I cleared the partition table, I used fdisk on a boot floppy. Do you think using the Linux tools (from knoppix, say) would help?

[Bjorn]

[Mandrake]

I'm not saying it would be safer on the windows one. I meant that it seemed that other than Knoppix (which is a boot live CD) he hasn't used Linux yet. I would suggest doing dual hard-drives for anyone starting linux on there hard drive for the first time(esp ones with more lower level installers like Slackware and Debian) to start off with a dual hard-drive.

To me it makes more sense to have another hard drive in there. Or even more sense would be to have one hard-drive set up for OS’s (like windows and whatever branch of linux you like, or even multiple ones, or whatever) and a second one for data (probably FAT32 since Linux and windows can both read them).

This way, the probability of somehow fuxoring your data by updating windows or Linux is minimal. (and from what I’ve heard, although it is rare, windows update SP2 has been known to cause issue with some dual partitioned hard drives).

Of course this is coming form the states, where finding a 2-4gb hard drive (enough room for a windows/linux OS dual partition) at a used comp store is pretty cheap (20-30$ us). This is, of course, IMHO. I’ll take back the foolish remark. But, I do think that it is safer to have multiple hard drives rather than multiple partitions.
_________________
"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[Rainer Deyke]

If Windows XP fails to install, you may have physical errors on your disk. Do a surface scan across your entire disk. If nothing shows up, repeat at least twice. Surface errors don't always show up on the first scan.

[Terry]

Ok, problem solved. For some mysterious reason, fdisking the partition table clean, then FIX(ing)MBR _before_ I installed Windows just jinxed it into working. (I had previously tried FIXMBR after I found that the windows setup wouldn't boot). Don't ask me how, but it worked. Thanks for all your help everyone!

- Terry