After FC3 installation, WinXP CD Setup hangs at "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration"

Tue Apr 5 05:09:01 UTC 2005

On Apr 5, 2005 10:48 AM, Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 4, 2005 9:12 PM, Didier Casse <elprodigio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Apr 5, 2005 5:44 AM, Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > >
> > > (for reference this is the original thread with some more info
> > > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2005-April/msg00291.html)
> > >
> > > Didier,
> > >
> > > Can you give us a quick overview of what you did to install Fedora on
> > > this laptop?  Including how the laptop was repartitioned (I remember
> > > your friend did the partitioning, can you ask him/her?).  This might
> > > help us figure out what has happened to Windows.
> > >
> >
> > Ok my friend said he partitioned his HDD as C: D: E: F:. And he wanted
> > to give the D; to Linux. I told him previously that Linux is different
> > from WinXP and doesn' t require D: (different file systems!) or
> > whatever and that some free space would do.
> >
> > So he told me he used partition magic and wiped out D: then relabelled:
> >
> > E->D
> > F->E
> 
> Hmm, out of curiosity, did he ever boot Windows after all of this?
> I'm trying to figure out whether Fedora did something bad or if
> perhaps it happened with the re-partitioning.

Well yeah Windows could still boot!

> 
> > And I installed linux of the free space (which I partitioned using
> > disk druid) which used to be the old D!
> >
> > > One of the better courses of action might be to get the NTFS kernel
> > > module (see http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/) and mount all the
> > > Windows partitions to see what you can find.  Does it look like
> > > Windows is actually installed to hda1 like one would expect?  That is,
> > > can you find the WINDOWS or WINNT directory and ntldr file?  What is
> > > on hda11 (the second NTFS parition on the drive)?  Could Windows
> > > (somehow) actually be there instead?
> > >
> >
> > Already installed those NTFS stuff, I can see the disk drives D: and
> > E: but when it comes to C:, it can' t mount it!
> 
> Well, that's not good.  What kind of error does it give you?  Sounds
> like the partition has been corrupted some way.

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
or too many mounted file systems 

> 
> > I thought Win might be somewhere else so I tried to point GRUB to the
> > other location but w/o any success. So I realized it' s still in
> > /dev/hda1 but not accessible.
> 
> More bad news.
> 
> > > About the Windows CD not booting.  Is the CD for Windows XP SP1?  and
> > > is the installed version SP2?  If so, this might be the problem.  I've
> > > heard that there are problems with SP1 CDs after upgrading to SP2, but
> > > I don't know how these problems manifest themselves.  Perhaps you
> > > could try to get MS to send you an SP2 disk if nothing else works.
> > > Can you check the CDs in another computer?  Preferably one that still
> > > has SP1, or if that isn't an option, then one without Windows at all.
> > >
> >
> > We' re in a research center. So we can get MS CDs easily especially
> > because the National University of Singapore invests big bucks into
> > Microsoft. And they buy all sorts of things with Microsoft. Well they
> > believe that the problems which can be solved with money are not
> > really problems. But hey we'll take that part offline. ;-)
> >
> > So we got all kinds of CDs and the latest SPs. All of them work on
> > another PC but none of them works on the laptop.
> 
> Very strange.  What kind of laptop?  Was Windows installed at the
> factory, or did your friend install it?  That is, has it ever worked
> to your knowledge?

My friend installed it after he bought a new hdd fir his laptop. It
was working vefore the FC installation.

Laptop is a Samsung X10. German keyboard type. He bought it in Germany.

> Wait, did you use LVM to install Linux?  If so, that could be the
> problem; the LVM could potentially really confuse Windows.  If you
> used the Disk Druid option to use the free space, this is probably
> what was used (or did you use the manual option?).  But your fdisk -l
> in the other thread doesn't look like there are any LVMs.  There also
> aren't any swap paritions...

No LVM. No swap as the guy also changed his RAM to 768 Mb. So a swap
twice this size would take all the space. I don't really think we need
any swap with that kind of RAM!

> 
> > I was thinking as a last resort to nuke everything and re-partition
> > and re-install from scratch. That would be drastic and I would prefer
> > to avoid it as I did so many customizations so that a newbie could
> > easily use FC!!!. Thanks Jonathan and Jeff for answering.
> 
> Never an agreeable option, but it may come down to that.  Be sure to
> save any wanted data that is still accessible.  Is there anything else
> you could boot to try to look at the partition?  You mentioned
> Partition Magic, could you do something with it?

I tried to boot the rescue disks, or rather converted the diskettes
into cdroms. It booted then failed to load partition magic pro.

> > I installed Linux previously on 20 PC and laptops and never had such a
> > headache. It' s really annoying especially when I wanted to promote
> > Linux and install it on a friend that never used it before. So he
> > really freaked out now! :-(
> 
> Understandable.  But hey, it's Windows that isn't working now, not
> Linux : ). I'm sure he wasn't quite ready to go all out with Linux
> yet, though.  

Nope it's his first time with Linux. He's not ready to convert entirely. 

> Now, did Linux kill Windows is the question.  I've done
> this several times as well and not seen anything like this.  

Me too! Never seen it but it seems that something like this is present
in bugzilla

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=90894
Comment #11 From J.P. Gonzalez  	 on 2004-12-02 09:39 EST

> Well,
> keep us posted.

Will do for sure as I want to see everything running smoothly again.

> 
> PS: best wishes on the PhD!
> 
Thanks Jonathan... Still surviving! ;-)

-- 
Cheers,
Didier.

------------
Didier F.B Casse | PhD candidate | LiMiNT Beamline
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS), 5 Research Link, Singapore 117603
Email: elprodigioREMOVE_THIS_ANTISPAM_MOJO at gmail.com|
Web: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg | GPG Key 1024D/B3C57D01 2004-06-23