Fix for the XP dual boot problem
Greg Miller
greg-miller at shaw.ca
Thu May 20 00:33:04 UTC 2004
Well I was able to fix the problem by simply editing the grub.conf in rescue mode. For some reason it was looking for hd(1,6) instead od hd(0,6). I assume that is because I changed the installetion from hda to hde because I am booting from an sata drive.
Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: Gerry Tool <gstool at earthlink.net>
Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 6:19 pm
Subject: Re: Fix for the XP dual boot problem
> Greg Miller wrote:
> > It looks like I may have a similar but different problem.
> >
> > I wiped FC2test3 and winXP. I then re-installed XP (to solve
> other problems), then re-installed FC2. It looks like GRUB is
> screwed up and can not boot linux, but Win XP boots fine. I get an
> error message that indicates it can't find the partition abd to
> press a key to continue. The screen is barely readable and I can
> just select other to go to the XP/dos boot selection.
> >
> > I'm thinking I need to re-install grub from a rescue boot.
> >
> > AMD3200
> > K8T800 chipset
> > SATA drive
> > Radeon 9200 Video
> >
> > Greg.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Radu Cornea <ccradu at yahoo.com>
> > Date: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 5:25 pm
> > Subject: Re: Fix for the XP dual boot problem
> >
> >
> >>Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>The problem is that there is no "wrong geometry". For quite a
> while>>>these "geometries" are just inventions and illusions. Many
> years>>>ago hard disks indeed had all these head and cylinder
> geometries,>>>physical ones, but this is a bygone era. The trouble
> here is that
> >>>here XP invents one geometry and your kernel another and XP refuses
> >>>to work with what it decided it likes. Linux kernel is more
> >>>forgiving than that and anaconda should just read what an existing
> >>>partition table said and do not bother with any alerts.
> >>>
> >>
> >>Well, not exactly. What I call "wrong geometry" is when the two
> >>values
> >>(physical and logical) don't match. I know the same disk can be
> >>seen as
> >>having different geometries (e.g. 16 heads vs 255) but in the
> >>final
> >>C*H*S should be the same. As I mentioned in another post I get
> >>very
> >>different values from the 2.6 kernel, while 2.4 returns the
> >>correct ones:
> >>
> >>These are examples from FC2:
> >>$ more /proc/ide/hda/geometry
> >>physical 16383/16/63
> >>logical 19841/16/63
> >>
> >>On another FC2 machine:
> >>$ more /proc/ide/hda/geometry
> >>physical 16383/16/63
> >>logical 16383/255/63
> >>
> >>On a FC1 machine (2.4 kernel) the numbers are ok:
> >>$ more /proc/ide/hda/geometry
> >>physical 155009/16/63
> >>logical 9726/255/63
> >>
> >>The product C*H*S should be the same (or close at least)...
> >>But they are different (even for the same OS, not even talking
> >>about XP
> >>here).
> >>
> >>
> >>>Strictly speaking the bug is on an XP side but you are not likely
> >>>fare that well pursuing that.
> >>
> >>I agree this may be fixed on the XP side too. But still the
> >>installer
> >>has a problem. Why will it otherwise offer without any warning to
> >>change
> >>the mbr, when I did not select any partitioning and I chose to
> put
> >>Grub
> >>in the Linux partition. This reminds me of another OS (guess:))
> >>which
> >>overwrites mbr on install again without asking.
> >>Plus, there are report on bugzilla of people that did run
> >>partition
> >>magic after installing FC2 and got a lot of errors (mismatch) in
> >>the
> >>partition table.
> >>From the fdisk manual, the mbr stores the info in two ways: as an
> >>absolute number of sectors and as C/H/S. Windows uses both, while
> >>Linux
> >>never uses C/H/S. That's why I think Linux can still boot, and
> >>Windows
> >>not. Only C/H/S are changed during installation. That's why it is
> >>also
> >>possible to restore the original aprtition table.
> >>Fedora 2 is not the only one affected by it, but also Mandrake 10
> >>and
> >>Suse 9.1. See:
> >>
> >>https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959
> >>http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1585840,00.asp
> >>
> >>So far this post by Alan Cox seems to be the best explanation why
> >>this
> >>problem occurs with 2.6 kernels:
> >>
> >>https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=113201#c13
> >>
> >>"This seems to be a bug in the FC2 tools. The Linux kernel no longer
> >>does partition guessing (its a heuristic and policy at best), as a
> >>result the parted tools should be honouring existing partition
> table>>claims when they are present. Failure to do so causes very
> bad things
> >>to happen.
> >>
> >>Previously these situations the kernel itself would report the
> >>partition table or BIOS guess it made, now its firmly in userspace."
> >>
> >>
> >>--
> >>Radu
> >>
> >>
> >>--
> >>fedora-test-list mailing list
> >>fedora-test-list at redhat.com
> >>To unsubscribe:
> >>http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-test-list
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> I had a similar thing happen and discovered with fdisk that the
> partition it couldn't find was now labled as type 93 (amoeba)
> instead of
> 83 (linux). Check it out. I was able to correct it with the t
> command
> in fdisk.
>
> Gerry Tool
>
>
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