Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 12:43 am, Lord Storm wrote: SNIP Storm, old china plate, Windows ALWAYS needs to be installed FIRST - no matter what - it's a Microsoft thing - it will rewrite your partition tables no matter what - and if you hose up your Windows installation after mucking around with GNU/linux, well, you're going to have to blast it all out and start again. For whatever reason, the MS family of OS's refuses to be on anything - or rather, boot from anything except for HDA1 (or the entire HDA for that matter); by common practise, Windows is install first, then everything else after that. Can't get around it. snip Windows 2k was installed first then mandrake then partition scrambled. FIXMBR FIXBOOT did not work at all. I know that Windows has to be installed first (been using mandrake since 9.0) but this is the first time I have encountered this problem with MDK in 10. Some how it could be the bios level F4 bios its now F6 and Mandrakesoft may be configuring stuff for the F6 BIOS now. Also I do not know enough about lilo to configure it after mandrake is installed. I think ill be doing the beta run with MDK 10.1 and all candidates I just hope they anounce it on Distrowatch. This might be of interest:- See: http://basiclinux.net/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Basiclinux/WindowsBootLoss Be sure to see the link to the Prevention and Recovery - it's a lot easier to read then the huge bug reports. :-) Loss of Windows XP boot after Linux Install Some people are finding that they can no longer boot Windows XP after installing Fedora Core 2. I found a similar bugzilla report for Mandrake 10 and reports of this on SUSE 9.1 as well. There is a combination of ingredients that causes this problem. They are: 1. The distro uses the 2.6 kernel 2. The distro installer uses parted to repartition the drive 3. The installation is done on a large hard drive 4. Windows XP is installed on that same drive What happens to cause the problem? I am not an expert on this, but my understanding of what I've read in the bug reports is that this is it in a nutshell: 1. kernel 2.6 doesn't try to give the logical geometry, and gives the physical geometry instead 2. parted (front-ends include diskdrake and disk druid) uses the physical geometry given by the kernel to generate the CHS information during the repartitioning. This CHS information gets written to the partition table 3. the BIOS sees that the partition table uses a different CHS geometry, and adapts to it 4. Windows has the previous geometry that it keeps in its boot sector. This no works with the changed CHS that the BIOS now provides. The Windows boot fails. To read the bug reports yourself, see: * Mandrake bug report opened: 2004.02.17 http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959 * Fedora bug report opened: 2004-02-17 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980 For information on how to prevent or recover from this problem see Dual Booting Issues With Fedora Core 2 and Windows: Prevention Recovery http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/ This guide should also help with other distros which have this problem. The basic idea for prevention here is to give the drive geometry as a parameter when booting the kernel during installation - for example: linux hda=14593,255,63 The guide explains that you can get the geometry using fdisk (Linux version) from a rescue disk. The explanation uses the Fedora Rescue CD, but there are a number of rescue disks available - normally the installation CD itself can function as a rescue disk. My thinking is that laying down the partitions before doing the install would solve the problem, but many new users would rightfully just use the installer to do the job and run right into this situation of not being able to book Windows XP afterwards. fdisk or cfdisk do not read the geometry in the same way that parted does. Another prevention for this would be to install Linux on a separate hard drive. I would recommend that you do not install GRUB or LILO to the MBR of the disk that Windows is on, because I have seen reports of this geometry still being rewritten in such a case. -- AnitaLewis - 19 Jun 2004 -- Registered Linux User:- 329524 --- The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures. .Henry David Thoreau ___ This email is guaranteed to be Wholly Linux Mandrake 9.2, KMail v1.5.3 and OpenOffice.org1.1.0 Experience what others using Mandrake Linux have experienced at:- http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club :
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
I think ill be doing the beta run with MDK 10.1 and all candidates I just hope they anounce it on Distrowatch. Have you tried using Partition Magic to repair the partition table? stephen kuhn - proprietor No since I dont think they make partition Magic for linux and I only have 1 harddrive otherwise the problem would of been fixed by now. All I can say is ... im glad im not alone I dont know what they did with the NTFS sure it was buggy but it seemed more buggy since SOT RC1 came out. Gee catch up time I suppose... WINFS is comming soon. MDK10 Gigabyte GA-8SR533 P4 Titan M/b 1.7Ghz Celeron 384MB RAM Geforce 4 64MB Labtec USB mouse ADSL eth0 40gig Maxtor Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 18:23, Lord Storm wrote: I think ill be doing the beta run with MDK 10.1 and all candidates I just hope they anounce it on Distrowatch. Have you tried using Partition Magic to repair the partition table? stephen kuhn - proprietor No since I dont think they make partition Magic for linux and I only have 1 harddrive otherwise the problem would of been fixed by now. All I can say is ... im glad im not alone I dont know what they did with the NTFS sure it was buggy but it seemed more buggy since SOT RC1 came out. Gee catch up time I suppose... WINFS is comming soon. Partition Magic comes on a CD and no matter what x86 OS you run, it can access the partitons and/or repair them - you just boot from the PM CD... stephen kuhn - proprietor __ illawarra computer services :: a kuhn media australia venture http://kma.0catch.com :: mobile 0410.728.389 Serving Sydney, The Illawarra, South Coast and Rural NSW __ * This message was composed on a 100% Microsoft free computer * We expressly refuse to utilise Microsoft DRM encoded documents __ Certified virus-free since we don't use Microsoft products In a whiskey it's age, in a cigarette it's taste and in a sports car it's impossible. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 21:39, Lord Storm wrote: Well I run the bellow system. I had windows 2k pro with NTFS and some how mandrake purged Win2k from Partitions and windows would not reinstall. Operating system error or something like that it was about 2 weeks ago. Not that I realy care now, but SOT linux did it to me as well. 9.2 Didnt do it. So I was wondering if it is creeping into the NTFS partition managagement tree. I have downloaded the maxtor tool for low level format to try and fix the hard drive latter. Storm, old china plate, Windows ALWAYS needs to be installed FIRST - no matter what - it's a Microsoft thing - it will rewrite your partition tables no matter what - and if you hose up your Windows installation after mucking around with GNU/linux, well, you're going to have to blast it all out and start again. For whatever reason, the MS family of OS's refuses to be on anything - or rather, boot from anything except for HDA1 (or the entire HDA for that matter); by common practise, Windows is install first, then everything else after that. Can't get around it. stephen kuhn - proprietor == illawarra computer services a kuhn media australia company http://kma.0catch.com mobile: 0410.728.389 -- * This message was composed on a 100% Microsoft free computer * We expressly refuse to utilise Microsoft DRM encoded documents -- Certified virus-free since we don't use Microsoft products Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... Go away. You bother me. Why? Because life is unfair. That's a nice drawing. What is it? Children should be seen and not heard. You'll be the death of me. You'll understand when you're older. Because. Wipe that smile off your face. I don't believe you. How many times have I told you to be careful? Just beacuse. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Monday 21 June 2004 08:49 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: For whatever reason, the MS family of OS's refuses to be on anything - or rather, boot from anything except for HDA1 (or the entire HDA for that matter); by common practise, Windows is install first, then everything else after that. Can't get around it. To give MS credit where it is due, that is not totally true. Win XP can be readily installed to any hard drive and while it is true that it will rewrite the MBR of HDA with its own boot loader, booting from the Mandrake CD and adding an entry to lilo.conf and then reinstalling lilo to the MBR will allow dual booting. Of course, you have to know what you are doing when you install Windows and IIRC, you have to manually create the installation partitions, not allow Windows to do it on its own. -- Bryan Phinney Software Test Engineer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 22:58, Bryan Phinney wrote: On Monday 21 June 2004 08:49 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: For whatever reason, the MS family of OS's refuses to be on anything - or rather, boot from anything except for HDA1 (or the entire HDA for that matter); by common practise, Windows is install first, then everything else after that. Can't get around it. To give MS credit where it is due, that is not totally true. Win XP can be readily installed to any hard drive and while it is true that it will rewrite the MBR of HDA with its own boot loader, booting from the Mandrake CD and adding an entry to lilo.conf and then reinstalling lilo to the MBR will allow dual booting. Of course, you have to know what you are doing when you install Windows and IIRC, you have to manually create the installation partitions, not allow Windows to do it on its own. Ok, so ya pinned me to a dead fish on that - but still, UNLESS YOU'RE AN EXPERT, you're going to hose up the installation...and if you're dependent on particular partion numberings, installing Windows AFTER linux is going to be a nightmare. stephen kuhn - proprietor __ illawarra computer services :: a kuhn media australia venture http://kma.0catch.com :: mobile 0410.728.389 Serving Sydney, The Illawarra, South Coast and Rural NSW __ * This message was composed on a 100% Microsoft free computer * We expressly refuse to utilise Microsoft DRM encoded documents __ Certified virus-free since we don't use Microsoft products Real wealth can only increase. -- R. Buckminster Fuller Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
SNIP Storm, old china plate, Windows ALWAYS needs to be installed FIRST - no matter what - it's a Microsoft thing - it will rewrite your partition tables no matter what - and if you hose up your Windows installation after mucking around with GNU/linux, well, you're going to have to blast it all out and start again. For whatever reason, the MS family of OS's refuses to be on anything - or rather, boot from anything except for HDA1 (or the entire HDA for that matter); by common practise, Windows is install first, then everything else after that. Can't get around it. snip Windows 2k was installed first then mandrake then partition scrambled. FIXMBR FIXBOOT did not work at all. I know that Windows has to be installed first (been using mandrake since 9.0) but this is the first time I have encountered this problem with MDK in 10. Some how it could be the bios level F4 bios its now F6 and Mandrakesoft may be configuring stuff for the F6 BIOS now. Also I do not know enough about lilo to configure it after mandrake is installed. I think ill be doing the beta run with MDK 10.1 and all candidates I just hope they anounce it on Distrowatch. -- MDK10 Unsupported Gigabyte GA-8SR533 P4 Titan M/b F4 BIOS 1.7Ghz Celeron 384MB RAM Geforce 4 64MB Labtec USB mouse ADSL eth0 40gig Maxtor Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Monday 21 June 2004 09:42 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: snip Ok, so ya pinned me to a dead fish on that - but still, UNLESS YOU'RE AN EXPERT, you're going to hose up the installation...and if you're dependent on particular partion numberings, installing Windows AFTER linux is going to be a nightmare. stephen kuhn - proprietor Installing Windows BEFORE Linux isn't exactly a day in the country, either. There was a thread on /. last night about the problem of updating a brand new installation of Windows without getting hacked. Not a simple task, particularly for a home user with only one PC. -- cmg Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 00:43, Lord Storm wrote: SNIP Storm, old china plate, Windows ALWAYS needs to be installed FIRST - no matter what - it's a Microsoft thing - it will rewrite your partition tables no matter what - and if you hose up your Windows installation after mucking around with GNU/linux, well, you're going to have to blast it all out and start again. For whatever reason, the MS family of OS's refuses to be on anything - or rather, boot from anything except for HDA1 (or the entire HDA for that matter); by common practise, Windows is install first, then everything else after that. Can't get around it. snip Windows 2k was installed first then mandrake then partition scrambled. FIXMBR FIXBOOT did not work at all. I know that Windows has to be installed first (been using mandrake since 9.0) but this is the first time I have encountered this problem with MDK in 10. Some how it could be the bios level F4 bios its now F6 and Mandrakesoft may be configuring stuff for the F6 BIOS now. Also I do not know enough about lilo to configure it after mandrake is installed. I think ill be doing the beta run with MDK 10.1 and all candidates I just hope they anounce it on Distrowatch. Have you tried using Partition Magic to repair the partition table? stephen kuhn - proprietor __ illawarra computer services :: a kuhn media australia venture http://kma.0catch.com :: mobile 0410.728.389 Serving Sydney, The Illawarra, South Coast and Rural NSW __ * This message was composed on a 100% Microsoft free computer * We expressly refuse to utilise Microsoft DRM encoded documents __ Certified virus-free since we don't use Microsoft products [Washington, D.C.] is the home of... taste for the people -- the big, the bland and the banal. -- Ada Louise Huxtable Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
Re: [newbie] NTFS Partition slaughter
On Tue, 2004-06-22 at 04:43, Carroll Grigsby wrote: On Monday 21 June 2004 09:42 am, Stephen Kuhn wrote: snip Ok, so ya pinned me to a dead fish on that - but still, UNLESS YOU'RE AN EXPERT, you're going to hose up the installation...and if you're dependent on particular partion numberings, installing Windows AFTER linux is going to be a nightmare. stephen kuhn - proprietor Installing Windows BEFORE Linux isn't exactly a day in the country, either. There was a thread on /. last night about the problem of updating a brand new installation of Windows without getting hacked. Not a simple task, particularly for a home user with only one PC. -- cmg Actually, I had a laugh over that one (I'm on /. at least twice a day) I've developed a particular routine for dual-boot machines: 1.) Partition the drive, give Windows the first partition; format the partition with VFAT, then move that first partition to the REAR of the HD - reboot 2.) Install Win 3.) After Win is installed, boot into Partition Magic, create whatever partitions are required (a swap and at least a / partition) format with ext3 4.) Start the GNU/linux installation - keep the partitions unless wanting a different file system (like ReiserFS or whatever) 5.) Install lilo to the MBR Works like a champ every time. stephen kuhn - proprietor __ illawarra computer services :: a kuhn media australia venture http://kma.0catch.com :: mobile 0410.728.389 Serving Sydney, The Illawarra, South Coast and Rural NSW __ * This message was composed on a 100% Microsoft free computer * We expressly refuse to utilise Microsoft DRM encoded documents __ Certified virus-free since we don't use Microsoft products The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Join the Club : http://www.mandrakeclub.com
