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@xxxxxxx> To: fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx 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..? -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list --- Mikael Konttinen - micken@xxxxxxx Composer and Art Student Bergen / Norway
