Fix for the XP dual boot problem

[Radu Cornea]

--- Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat.com> wrote:

> /me assumes it would be possible to automate the fix up of the
> partition table with creative use of:
> 
>   sfdisk -d | sfdisk -C# -H# -S#
> 

You are right, that is a way better solution. I wasn't aware of the
sfdisk utility before.

I tried to recreate the bad partition problem again (from the saved mbr
sector), made sure XP wasn't booting any more and then I run in Linux:

sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H240 /dev/hda

This seems to have fixed it just like my original procedure (well much
easier :) ). I even did a byte compare of the mbr with the one I restored
before using those long steps and they are the same.

Plus, I did not have to run 'fdisk /mbr' from DOS any more (I guess the
sfdisk utility just changes the values not the rest of signatures etc).
So this looke like the best solution to fix the problem so far.

If this helps to find the problem with the wrong geometry, even after
fixing the mbr, the kernel reports wrong geometry in
/proc/ide/hda/geometry. My laptop is a IBM Thinkpad 600, so it probably
has an older BIOS. If there is anything else I can do to help finding the
bug, please let me know.

--
Radu



	
		
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