[Sircarson]

Hey, I just got the new 8.10 Linux and I wanted to do a dual boot. I had my friend over to partition my two hard drives when i needed to reinstall Windows. I installed Linux on the second hard drive that did not have Windows on it. And he says that Linux usually gives you the option on what you want to boot to. But it doesn't. All my stuff from Windows is there but I can't use Windows. He said that maybe the boot.ini or whatever it's called was overwritten or deleted. Can anyone help me I have a very important English paper to type.

-Sircarson

[saikee]

Permanent rescue

Need the following information submitted

(1) In Ubuntu post the file /boot/grub/menu.lst
(2) In Ubuntu terminal post the screen output of

sudo su
fdisk -l

(3) In Ubuntu terminal post the screen output of

grub
geometry (hd0)
geometry (hd1)
quit

Temporary cure

(1) When seeing Grub screen, press esc key and the "c" key to drop into a Grub prompt terminal mode.

(2) Find out which disk has Windows by typing commands

geometry (hd0)
geometry (hd1)

A MS Windows partition has type 0x7 partition ID. A Linux has 0x83 type ID. The partition with MS Windows is in either (hd0,0) or (hd1,0), assuming it occupies the first partition of either the 1st disk (hd0) or the 2nd disk (hd1)

(3) Boot up Windows manually by following commands in Grub prompt

(a) Windows type 0x7 ID in disk (hd0)

root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot

(b) Windows type partition ID 0x7 in (hd1)

root (hd1,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
boot

If your MS Windows is in a Fat32 partition it would have type ID 0xc.

[Sircarson]

Thanks, i will try it when i get home from school. I will let you know if it doesn't work.

[darkwade]

I was the guy that reinstalled windows for him...

some things sircarson forgot to add
are that
he has two IDE hard drives one is split in to C:/D: 40GB and the other is E: 80GB
C: is his ubuntu linux drive
D: is his storage drive
E: is windows xp home SP2

when he installed ubuntu it must have removed boot.ini from his C: drive and replaced it with grub.

so he should be looking in HD1 not HD0.

With that info do you think you can fix his problem I only know the basics of linux so I cant help to much more with out being there on his computer.

[darkwade]

NTFS on E: and D: drives linux formats on C:

[Sircarson]

Thank you Darkwade

[saikee]

It looks that you have overwritten the booting partition of Xp.

Xp and all MS systems need to have the boot loader inside the boot sector of the partition it resides if it is a stand alone system. In you case your original "c" drive was the partition storing the Xp's boot loader as your Xp is installed elsewhere. The "c" should have been a Dos partition or an older WIndows serving to boot Xp. When that is gone your Xp is now in trouble and my suggested methods will not work.

AFAIK Xp needs 3 files to boot

boot.ini
ntldr
ntdetect.com

In theory you can place them in D drive, make the partition active (set the booting flag on) install the Xp MBR using a Dos floppy or any Win2k/Xp installation CD.

Xp or any MS Windows MBR only searches any of the 4 primary partition and boot one that has the booting flag switched on. The MBR will load the NTLDR and the configuration file boot.ini will guide the Xp partition to be booted. I believe NTLDR and NTdetect.com can be sourced from any Xp installation CD. You can write the boot.ini yourself by copy any one from a Xp machine and amend the disk and partition number.

All the above can be done by a modern Linux Live CD, like Slax, Ubuntu, Puppy etc. Slax is the one that allows you to see and write the hidden file boot.ini. Most other Linux distros requires you log on as root to have the necessary admin right which is handed out by Slax automatically.

All the information inside the Xp partition should remain intact until you decide to destroy it by say like overwriting it as in the case of your C drive.

[darkwade]

back from when I last installed linux I vaguely remember some way of using grub to jump start windows?

If worst came to worst he could install windows on drive C: and edit boot.ini changing the path from C: to E: to use his existing install, I did that with my computer last month.
then he could install linux on drive D: leaving C: as storage and E: as windows. that should work correct?

[darkwade]

every time i've installed linux windows shows up as windows generic longhorn or windows generic XP. I'm not exactly sure what I'm talking about, but if he could put those files that he needs on his E: drive would Grub notice it and give him the option to boot in windows?

I figured it was worth asking anyway

[saikee]

Grub can fire up a MS Windows as long as it has the boot loader residing in the boot sector of that partition.

Grub in such case simply "chainload" itself to it. In essence Grub cuts off everything except its first sector and pastes it to the MS Windows partition starting from its +1 position or the 2nd sector onward. In execution Xp only access the partition table of the first sector and would not aware the MBR (first 512 bytes) is different from its own.

If you have "destroyed" the partition where NTLDR (Xp's own boot loader) resides, including its system files, then Xp in E will not boot as NTLDR did not reside in E but in C which is now a Linux partition holding a Ubuntu.

If you swap the disks, thereby the 2nd disk E drive becomes the first bootable disk you still need to restore the 3 system files as I indicated in Post #7. It should work but I haven't tried it myself, as I use Grub which can do the swap on-the-fly as I indicated in Post #7.

Grub and Linux's other boot loader Lilo do not know which version of Window they boot as these boot loaders are very simple programs. They know for sure only if the boot sector can be chainloaded or not so that the control can be passed over if instructed.