Re: Sarge Test Candidate 1 broke WinXP on my triple-boot i386
--- Christian Perrier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Because you probably asked for the creation of 2 partitions while there was only one before. It is then logical that the partition numbering is then changed. Or, more generally speaking, the number of Linux partition after Debian install was different from the number of Linux partitions before. What was before partition number 2 is now partition number 3. Or 4, or 1, or whatever... As boot.ini relies on the partition numbering scheme for naming partitions, it becomes logical that the NT boot loader is confused. The same would happen with another Linux installation if this another install uses several partitions--its /etc/fstab could need to be changed if the number of partition changes. In your case, there is no solution rather than manual fixing after the installation. Any solution would involve changing the boot.ini file which is certainly *not* to be done. I dunno. I had, at various times, installed two versions of Mandrake and one of Red Hat, and none of them moved my XP partition. It's been a while, but I believe I initially partitioned the drive with Win98 in primary partition 1, WinXP in primary partition 2, and created partition 3 as extended with two or three Linux logical partitions, depending on which Linux I had installed at the moment. Seems to me that Debian could easily have replaced the previous Linux partitions without changing the WinXP partition from primary to logical. That's apparently what Mandrake and Red Hat had done. I don't really understand why you ask your NT boot loader to load another Windows flavour. Why not just leave this to GRUB also? Using two boot loaders simultaneously highly increases the probability of some mess happening..:-) Because that's what I was originally able to get to work, perhaps based on something I read on the net... I've just read the GRUB manual, and doing it all with GRUB looks easy and tidier. I'll give it a shot. Franz -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sarge Test Candidate 1 broke WinXP on my triple-boot i386
Thanks for the reply. I figured out what happened. The Debian installer changed the partition number of my XP partition, I think by changing it from a primary partition to a logical partition. After a lot of Googling, I learned that the NT boot loader is a program named ntldr in my Win98 C:\ that is configured by a (hidden) text file (thank God) named boot.ini also in C:\. I edited boot.ini so that instead of looking for WinXP in partition 2, it now looks for it in partition 3, and XP boots fine. So, the question now is, why did partitioning move my XP partition when all I asked it to do was delete my Mandrake partitions and create Debian partitions in their stead? Another question: I tried reinstalling Debian, and now the GRUB installer does not notice Windows and so does not create a boot-menu option for it. I aborted the installation because that gave me the willies. Franz --- Christian Perrier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When the system rebooted I did not immediately boot Debian to continue the install. Instead, I asked GRUB to boot Windows, which correctly booted the NT boot loader. When I asked the NT boot loader to boot WinXP, however, XP errored out with a message saying that Windows root\system32\hal.dll was missing or corrupt. (Oddly, Win98 still boots fine from the NT boot loader.) I find it hard to believe that the Debian installer really did trash my system32\hal.dll file. In fact, I It did not. Nothing in any d-i module is writing to any partition other than those you choose to install to. It has been confirmed many times that the installed GRUB still allows booting a NT/W2K/XP partition, thus with the NT boot loader. I even myself did the exact same test you describe (except the alternate boot on Win98) and it worked OK. After the 1st reboot, the system was able to boot XP with no problem. Further, my efforts at repairing XP have somehow removed GRUB, so the system now boots straight to the NT boot loader, so even if I fix XP, I'll need to reinstall Debian, which will presumably nuke XP again! There is absolutely no reason and no magic. Debian Installer does *not* write to any Windows partition. It just installs the boot loader on your primary disk. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sarge Test Candidate 1 broke WinXP on my triple-boot i386
Until last night I had an i386 triple-boot system with Win98, WinXP, and Mandrake. LILO in the MBR would boot either Linux or the NT boot loader (which LILO labeled Windows), which lived in the first partition I believe. The NT boot loader would then boot either Win98, in the FAT32 first partition (C:), or WinXP, in the NTFS second partition (D:). Last night I installed Debian sarge Test Candidate 1 net installer. Everything seemed to go fine. I deleted the Mandrake partitions and allowed the installer to automatically create the Debian partitions in the newly freed space. The GRUB install said I had one other OS, Windows NT/2000/XP, which I assume meant the NT boot loader in the first partition. When the system rebooted I did not immediately boot Debian to continue the install. Instead, I asked GRUB to boot Windows, which correctly booted the NT boot loader. When I asked the NT boot loader to boot WinXP, however, XP errored out with a message saying that Windows root\system32\hal.dll was missing or corrupt. (Oddly, Win98 still boots fine from the NT boot loader.) I find it hard to believe that the Debian installer really did trash my system32\hal.dll file. In fact, I used the XP install disk's recovery console (i.e. DOS) to look for the file, and it's still there. The XP partition (D:, NTFS) as a whole looks just fine. Another possibility is that the NT boot loader was damaged and it's now looking in the wrong place for XP. But why does it still boot Win98, then? Very odd. And very annoying, because the only way I know to fix it is to reinstall XP, after first copying everything I care about from the XP partition to the Win98 partition using DOS. I suspect that all I really need to do is repair the NT boot loader, but I have no idea how. Further, my efforts at repairing XP have somehow removed GRUB, so the system now boots straight to the NT boot loader, so even if I fix XP, I'll need to reinstall Debian, which will presumably nuke XP again! Any help very much appreciated. Franz Amador [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
