Call for Discussion: Summary document concerning Prevention and Recovery of XP Dual Boot Problems

[Jeff Spaleta]

Okay, a generous community member has been so kind as to write a
summary document
outlining  prevention and recovery on systems where the infamous
harddrive geometry installer bug causes problems with XP dual booting.

Please, read over the attached document and test the preventative and
recovery methods outlined.  Suggestions on useful textual edits and
corrections to make before this is widely broadcast are welcome. This
is important enough of an issue to make sure the information in here
is non-toxic before we broadcast a version of this widely, the goal
being to prevent all unncessary dataloss.

Of particular interest:

1)test the preventative measure if you still have access to a machine
where this is a problem. Prevention is always better, if it can be
done reliably.

2)finding a better workaround stdisk warning messages that are being
produced that intefere with simple sfdisk command pipe recovery.
 

-jef"Die CHS Die!"spaleta

------------------->Begin Summary Document Text<----------------------------

Dual Booting Issues With Fedora Core 2 and Windows: Prevention & Recovery
 
NOTICE: Please read this document in its entirety.
 
This guide was inspired by the solution developed by Radu Cornea and
Alexandre Oliva in this thread:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-May/msg02114.html .
This guide aims to integrate the original solution with the refinements
evolved in that thread.  This guide offers an explanation of why the
refinements are beneficial and some workarounds to problems that may prevent
the uninitiated from using the solution. It also provides a means of
preventing the problem entirely.
 
Primer:
 
        There is a bug in Fedora Core 2 that causes the hard disk geometry as
reported in the partition table to be altered during installation.  This
change may cause Windows boot failure.  Although this bug is severe, it is
recoverable and no data should be lost.  It is important not to panic if and
when this happens so you do not cause further problems or cause actual loss
of data in the process of recovering from the error.

Prevention:
                                                                                
        This bug can be avoided entirely by using some preventative steps while
installing Fedora Core 2.  Thanks go out to Cero (cero at coolnetworx.net) for
discovery and testing of this solution.
                                                                                
        To avoid the hard disk geometry to be altered you may enter it manually
during installation by using the hdN=<drive geometry> parameter (where N is
the letter representing the drive with the MBR you will use).  To discover
the current geometry before installing Fedora Core 2 you should use a
utility that can read the drive geometry as reported in the partition table