Help: Dual boot recovery from RHFC2 installation bug failure
Mikael Konttinen
micken at home.se
Thu Jul 15 10:09:26 UTC 2004
Hey Netmask,
Thanks! Yes, I see the problem of giving advice in such matters as this... But, I'm well aware that I'm really on my own responsability of what I decide to do. Now I'm asking for advice out of knowledge or experience that others might have, for example about understanding of how disk geometry works, as that is ancient greek for me.
I wish there was defined somewhere what the Fedora 2 disk geometry rewrite really does and means and what procedures should be avoided to minimize risk of data loss afterwards.
For example if re-partitioning messes up the entire partition table or if formatting or even writing data to the disk is at at risk to bleed across the old file allocations or partition tables and thereby every disk write is possibly destroying data...
I wonder if I should try to find an 100GB+ disk to lend and backup all data, repartition and reformat NTFS data partitions and then copy everything back again or if the data is really not at risk. I don't understand if it's just WinXP that has a problem booting because of the recent change but hopefully will work just fine after a fresh install or if the entire disk is possibly in disorder. And especially since the published fixes didn't work out.
Well, at least GRUB shouldn't be a problem as it's not installed on the MBR but on the boot partition...
Yours and thanks again for your reply!
Mkn.
-----Original Message-----
From: netmask <netmask at enZotech.net>
To: Mikael Konttinen <micken at home.se>
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:43:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Help: Dual boot recovery from RHFC2 installation bug failure
I wish I had an answer for ya.. I imagine others aren't answering because
they don't want to feel bad if it breaks your machine.
Re-formatting the partition that windows is on should be fine.. but when
windows over-writes your master boot record and wipes out grub, that'll be a
pain in the ass..
Don't take these comments as a recommendation.. I just wanted to let you know
that people are listening.. I just dont thinkanyone has a straight answer, and
there is too much risk to your system in being 'wrong'.
-netmask
> Mikael Konttinen (micken at home.se) composed on Jul 15, 2004:
>
> All,
>
> Since nobody has replied to my earlier post, please let me narrow the question down a bit:
>
> After FC2 installation bug WinXP boot failure and recovery according to the SFDISK method, but stuck with a XP that boots half-way but fails at Mup.sys; Do you think it's safe to format the WinXP partition reinstall WinXP without risking to mess up the partition table and/or loose data on the data partitions?
>
> Please reply, I'm not sure how the disk geometry is written on disk and what risks re-partitioning after the FC2 installation bug there might be.
>
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Mkn.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mikael Konttinen <micken at home.se>
> To: fedora-list at redhat.com
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 20:05:46 +0200
> Subject: Help: Dual boot recovery from RHFC2 installation bug failure
>
>
> Hello all,
>
> I'm quite new on Linux though I know my way around and very new on Red
> Hat and Fedora. I've recently installed RHFC2 and Planet CCRMA and
> discovered that my Windows XP doesn't boot any more. I've followed the
> instructions on http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/ (sfdisk -d /dev/hda |
> sfdisk --no-reread -H255 (alt. -H240) /dev/hda) but it didn't make any
> difference. I've also tried to switch from AUTO to LBA and even LARGE,
> without luck.
>
> This is my disk, after numerous attempts of recovery from booted RHFC1
> Installation CD (linux rescue) and working RHFC2 installation.
>
> # sfdisk -l /dev/hda
>
> Disk /dev/hda: 19457 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
> Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from
> 0
>
> Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 0+ 1019 1020- 8193118+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/hda2 1033 19456 18424 147990780 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/hda3 * 1020 1032 13 104422+ 83 Linux
> /dev/hda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
> /dev/hda5 1033+ 1096 64- 514048+ 82 Linux swap
> /dev/hda6 1097+ 2039 943- 7574616 83 Linux
> /dev/hda7 2040+ 14787 12748- 102398278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/hda8 14788+ 19456 4669- 37503711 7 HPFS/NTFS
>
> hda1 is my WinXP installation that doesn't boot. hda3 is my /boot with
> GRUB on it, no GRUB on the MBR. GRUB and RHFC2 boots just fine. The
> Windows NT bootloader pops up as supposed to and I'm even able to boot
> back to GRUB (as configured in boot.ini during previous linux
> installation). But, WinXP itself is not booting further than
> Windows\System32\drivers\Mup.sys when in Safe Mode.
>
> If neccessary, I can sacrifice my current WinXP installation and
> reinstall it, but I'd prefer to get it running. What I'm really worried
> about is loosing any data on hda7/8 and I'd prefer not to be forced to
> back up ~100GB of raw audio and video along with scans and documents on
> DVD-R/W... and especially when not used to burning media on Linux.
>
> I'm not sure how disk geometry works so that is why I haven't dared to
> reinstall WinXP in case the other partitions are blown to bits in case
> the disk is repartitioned or otherwise disk geometry is again rewritten
> during WinXP installation.
>
> Running a Samsung SP1614N 160GB on a Shuttle motherboard with nForce2
> chipset. No third party software has been used. No other ways
> attempted for recovery, apart from the sfdisk operations mentioned, so I
> hope everything is still intact.
>
> Very very thankful for help!
>
>
> Yours
>
> Mkn.
>
>
> Ps. I'm not sure what the empty hda4 partition is doing there, but I
> guess that's because only three primary partitions are used..?
>
>
>
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>
> ---
> Mikael Konttinen - micken at home.se
> Composer and Art Student
> Bergen / Norway
>
>
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---
Mikael Konttinen - micken at home.se
Composer and Art Student
Bergen / Norway
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