Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 30852
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2025/07/09 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/9     

2004/6/16-17 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:30852 Activity:high
6/16    Well, I tried to install Fedora Linux 2 on my second hard drive so
        I could dual boot.  Linux works (I'm using it now) but XP no
        longer boots.  Hmmm... The file system and such is all still
        there, so it must just be that Linux messed up the boot sector
        trying to allow for dual boot.  I have a winXP CD and I can run
        rescue console and get access.  Does anyone know how to get it
        to fix the boot sector?  (In the old days of dos, it was "sys c:"
        now... I dunno)
        \_ fdisk /mbr. GRUB should have handled above. hmm...
        \_ Look at fedora2-related articles and discussions on slashdot.
           This seems to be a common problem and it has to do something
           with 2.6 kernels and such. BTW, I dual-boot XP and Fedora and
           I didn't have this problem after installing FC2.
           \_ Yeah, I've been reading the bugzilla report
              http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980
              I'm surprised such a big problem made it into the "stable"
              release.  Sheesh
              \_ Because they don't give a shit about your windows system.  If
                 MS had done the same thing the slashdot tinfoil hat crowd
                 would be screaming.
                 \_ MS does the same thing, all the time.
                    \_ So all the time 2k,xp, etc, will wipe out your linux
                       boot partition?
2025/07/09 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/9     

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Cache (8192 bytes)
bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980
Resolution: Commit Bug Comments Opened by (Mike Lurk) on 2004-02-17 08:41 Description of problem: When installing FC2 test1 on a dual boot system, cannot boot to windows patition Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: always. conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg. img title Other rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1 when i try to boot to windows xp all I get is rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1 and just hangs there when I try to reset the MBR in dos all I get is missing OS then check the partitions and get what I had said earlier. didn't change the kernel to reflect that I have an athlon processor and not an intel. One thing I did not mention, I had a second hard drive this time with a swap partition and a home directory. Disk /dev/hdb: 102 GB, 10248118272 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19857 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 1035 521608+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb2 1036 19845 9480240 83 Linux Still the same in dos's fdisk info, fat32 on partition 4 Has disk druid screwd up, if so I think you should make this a priority to have fixed. Disk /dev/hda: 1639 GB, 163928604672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19929 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 16572 133114558+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 16573 19930 26963685 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA) Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg. It did not get it when I did an upgrade, it only happened when I did a normal installation. Somehow, the FC2 test1 installation managed to change (or damage if you like) the partition table in such a way that my BIOS started to use CHS mode instead of LBA mode. Once I changed the BIOS setting to LBA, it worked again. So the question is: What did Fedora do to my partition table? I have also had this problem in the last few days and here is what i did: I didn't think it was Fedora Core 2 Test 1 So I re-installed XP. I even erased the MBR and formatted the drive installing a new partition for Windows using both FAT and NTFS, still no joy. In the end, I booted into linux, and in fdisk used option "o" which creates a new MSDOS partition table. It's worth noting in my list above that fdisk did complain about non-cylinder-aligned partitions, *but* fdisk didn't create any partitions--I made them in Windows, and just formatted them swap/ext3 when installing Linux. I tried to reproduce the problem later using a spare 2GB hard drive (since I didn't want to reinstall all my software on the 160GB drive all over again), but the problem did not occur. I suspect it's limited to larger drives, perhaps > 128GB. Re: Tobias's comment on LBA mode--my BIOS doesn't even give me that option, so I can't try that... conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg. I tried flashing my system's BIOS and the flash erase failed, leaving me with a doorstop. After warranty service from HP, I got the system back with a new motherboard and BIOS. It still wouldn't boot to Windows, which didn't surprise me. I wiped the drive and reinstalled Windows, then backed up the master boot record and partition tables before installing Linux, hoping to diff them and see what broke. Also, a warning message about being unable to "align" partitions did not appear during this Linux install, while it did when installing Linux under the older BIOS earlier. So apparently there was a bug in my system's BIOS that caused the Linux installer (disk druid or grub, one of the two) to hose something, but after installing with a newer BIOS in place, it didn't happen. Upon booting, I opened Partition Magic and watched in horror as error after error popped up. I have attached a compilation of the screenshots of the errors because I couldn't highlight the text to copy/paste it. FC1 and windows on my comp boot fine both, but if i upgrade to FC2 test1, so windows boot manager dont load. I tried reinstall both systems, repartitioning whole disk - nothing, after i install grub, windows boot loader dont start and this problem dont solve fdisk /mbr. Linux read BIOS access mode wrong and grub setup something wrong on MBR - its why windows boot manager cant be find in MBR and windows cannt start. Please, check what access mode you realy normal use to access disk. Changing access mode from Large to LBA for example can lead to lose data from your disk! If you use another access mode than LBA and setting them in BIOS doesnt work, try backup your data and repartitioning disk in LBA mode. That time I've chosen to install GRUB into MBR Since it messed up partition table (interestingly though, not entirely, looks like lba offsets were Ok, just CHS values were completely wrong). After that GRUP was able to load to linux, but not to Win2k. However, I managed to boot windows using Win2k boot disk (with ntldr & ntdetect on it). My playing around with MBR didn't help much, though after running recovery console, running fixmbr, fixboot and then MANUALLY editing ntfs bootsector, I was able to boot into Win2k from harddrive (not using grub, though, but native bootloader). Finally, I repartitioned entire harddrive, installed WinXP on it, created partitions for Linux using XP, than run redhat 90 install disk in rescue mode to set correct types of partitions. This time I backed up MBR and Windows boot loader (first 16 sectors of partitions). This time I specified Linux boot partition (/dev/hda3 in my case) as a destination for GRUB, hoping to use ntldr as a primary boot manager, and GRUB as linux boot loader only. Windows partition, however, has not been touched (I guess my previous manual edit of ntfs boot sector -head count was incorrect there- was due to some problem in MS fixboot). So I restored my backed up MBR, and lived happily thereafter, with both XP & Fedora working fine. Some info: hard drive 40GB partition table (to the best of my memory): /dev/hda1 <- win xp primary boot (10GB) /dev/hda2 <- extended /dev/hda3 <- linux boot (100MB) /dev/hda4 <- linux root (7GB) extended partition: /dev/hda5 <- ntfs /dev/hda6 <- ntfs /dev/hda7 <- FAt32 /dev/hda8 <- ntfs /dev/hda9 <- linux swap I don't have exact info at hands right away, but if it helps to fix a problem I can supply exact partion table info (out of fdisk or smth. This is the sort of MAJOR ISSUE THAT BELONGS IN RELEASE NOTES, EVEN FOR A TEST RELEASE. Seriously, it's not like it was reported by one guy on a random setup; many people have wasted countless hours due to this, and potentially lost data. Yes, it's a test release, but its the LAST ONE for FC2, and this problem still isn't solved. Initially I've installed grub to the mbr of the hda, which gave the-by now-expected result. I tried about all what we can read up there (also the lba in bios-trick) but nothing worked. Having two harddisks, a supplementary, possible but finally not succeeding solution gently nocked on the door. I've installed grub from scratch using the fedora rescue mode (I needed knoppix before to download it) and I installed grub to the mbr of the sda. In order to make xp accepting this I mapped the disks in grub... Is it for sure that only the mbr was affected by this bug. ini from the mbr of the other disk didn't work one could think that also the first sector of the xp-partition is touched. I hate wasting my time on windows and now I will have to reinstall it? From My point of view, the grub did "changes" the MBR so that the BIOS change from the default LBA into CHS. I can't even boot using HDD even for a Windows Recovery. From formating and starting with FC1 up throught FC2t3 al...