Please help!

I've just installed Mdk 9.1 on a second hard drive from the drive that my WinXP Home partition is located. The install automatically set up LILO with graphical menu as the boot loader, made Mdk the default OS to load, and put a 10sec timer to select something else.

Through Mandrake Control Center I went into DrakBoot to reconfigure it. I made Windows the default and bumped the timer to 15sec.

Windows will not start anymore.

When I select windows I get the usual WinXP Home boot screen with the green "kight Rider" status bar. It then breifly flashes the generic blue windows screen with this message -


The computer then restarts and I get the LILO menu again.

I can boot into Linux with and have tried resetting DrakBoot to the original settings as well as changing the default to LILO text mode as well as GRUB, but no luck. Also, when I boot into linux it no longer goes into Gnome but into KDE, so I think something else is going on too.

I need to get into windows. It's still my main OS and that's where all my docs are at.

I have had this problem before. During Mandrake install did you notice where lilo was installed to? Which drive ( ie) hda hdc ? Which partition (ie} master boot partition, hda5,hdc1? I believe the default was to hda.

Important questions to answer:

1) When you are in linux, can you see that you still have a windows partition? Hopefully, yes.
2) If you have a windows partition, put in the mandrake cd1, boot it, at the prompt hit F1, and type "rescue'. Choose "restore mbr" or it might say "restore windows mbr" or something like that. After the windows boot record is restored, try to get into windows.

I have had windows hose my system before, but never linux. If you can get into your windows, then follow the above proceedure and install lilo again. Perhaps some odd error occurred the first time. After you are comfortable that windows is still there, post your /etc/lilo.conf file here. and let's see if there is anything wrong with it.

Ok try this:

Boot cd1 of Mandrake. At the welcome screen, press F1. Then type 'rescue' (without the quote). This will bring you to a menu where one of the options is 'reinstall windows boot loader' (or something similar). Select this option and once it did what it has to do, reboot.

Notice that this will erase LILO from the master boot record. If it doesn't work and you want to reinstall LILO to boot Linux, do the following:

Boot cd1 of Mandrake. At the welcome screen, press F1. Then type 'rescue' and select from the option the one that look like 'reinstall LILO'. This will reinstall LILO on the MBR.

Notice that WinXP comes with a nice REPAIR option. You only have to boot the cd instead of selecting 'install' (ie press ENTER), type 'R' to repair the installation (put back all the dlls that were maybe erase somehow).

Good luck

MOttS

Ixthusdan Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2003 1:07 am
MottS Posted: Sat Jul 26, 2003 1:09 am

:mystilol:

Thanks for your suggestion. I restored the Windows boot loader and now the computer goes to the blue screen I described with the same message. The system restarts and loops to the blue screen over and over again. The only change now is that LILO doesn't ask me to pick windows. Obviously, now I can't get into Linux anymore till I reinstall LILO.

Seems like something has happened to windows. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Joe

I can tell you my fear. Starting with windex 2000, and of course through xp and xp pro, when windex partitions a drive it place pertinent data at the end of the partition. There is no reason to do this other than to thwart disk partitioning utilities that they do not support from functioning. You see, that is how windex does a "clean" business! :roll:

I did this when I went from me to xppro, and then moved my data to a 40G hard drive. Since windex wrecks everything, one generally must install windex first, and then the better os. (linux) However, I learned that you should partition the drive with linux, install windex in the designated partition (it will ignore the unpartitioned spce) and then you're fine. I suspect you used linux to utilized the unused windows disk space to make your linux partitions.

What to do: there is a chance that, although windex refuses to work, your data is retrievable through linux. So, use linux to place your critical data in a safe place, and then reinstall windex in the existing partition. You will lose everything, so grab everything critical.

That's what I think.

You don't need to reinstall Windows since only a couple (maybe 1, 2 or 3 or whatever) of files were destroyed or corrupted. So I suggest you to try the REPAIR option before to reinstall Windows. This is really easy, just boot the WinXP cd. It should detect that Windows is alrealy installed and ask you if you want to REPAIR it. Choose this option and it should works. It is basically going to delete some crutial DLLs and put them back on the hard drive. All the programs will still work after that and everything will be there again. The partition is not formated.

HTH

MOttS

Well ! am not too sure of that, If HAL.DLL which is guess is the one that gets it all booted up & running is missing ... its goodbye windows !!!

atleast that's my experience ... rescue works only for current session & is NOT permanant !

:!:

Thanks for all the help. I wish MS was this supportive.

Ixthusdan, I had WinXP installed on the 80gig drive first. The drive was partitioned for the main windows c partition, a swap partition, and a data partition. I recently installed a older 4gig laptop drive onto which I installed Mdk 9.1. Windows is on hda1 and Mdk is on hdc1.

After first installing a couple days ago, everything was working fine except for networking to access the internet via a router attached to a cable modem.

Other than this problem, I was able to access the windows partitions via nautilus in /mnt. I was able to see /mnt/win_c (main win partition), /mnt/win_d (the data partition), and /mnt/win_e (the win swap partition). Prior to these issues, I actually saw all my files in each partition and was able to actually open spreadsheets and word docs from /mnt/win_d.

NOW: I've reinstalled LILO and have gone back into Nautilus. /mnt still shows folders for /mnt/win_c, /mnt/win_d, and /mnt/win_e. I can still see files in win_c but now win_d and _e are empty. win_d is where all my data is at and now Linux doesn't see anything. Does this mean that all my data is now gone?

I would use a Win cd to repair windows, however my computer didn't come with one. I only have a restore cd that copies an image onto the drive to make it work. I'm afraid that this will destroy any chance I have of saving the data on my D partition.

The question is, what does this error message mean when WinXP boots:

"autochck program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK."

you need to find out what /dev/hdaX your two other partitions are.

post your /etc/fstab file

Here's a thought to check. I did a quick google search on your error message and there are quite a few similar cases. Most relate to using Partition Magic and having problems, but not all.

Scroll down to near bottom of this link and read. I haven't got it all sorted out yet, but a common thread is the files on XP are hidden and changing the attribute makes things work again.

http://64.179.4.146/questions/history/66137

It's a lead worth following I think. Good news is several recovered from the problem!

Since linux doesn't care about windex system files, I fear the worst if you can't see your files while in linux. I am not sure how the data partition would have been corrupted. I would have expected the windex system partition to have been corrupted.

Also, your description of the partition lay-out changes what I think happened. Because of the different partitions, and the partition that has been apparently wiped, I think this may be a hardware problem, e.g., a bad sector on the drive that has removed the record for that specific partition, because it is unreadable. So, as much as I would like to blame windex, this could have happened whether you had linux installed or not!

Don't know if you saw the other link in the LinuxQuestions site but here it is:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/58935

Sounds similar to what I sent above...scroll to the bottom to see the resolution.

Here is another link with similar problems of NTFS becoming hidden:

http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/le.../616/qid/439106

I found many sites with same info that Partition Magic and some Linux setups caused NTFS to show up as hidden files and then it cannot boot. I'm not the expert the others are... but before you blow off the drive, I'd try to check this out. I think you can also use Motts suggestion if you can get into the xp partitions and manually get to the fixmbr command.

Hope you can salvage it.

just a naive thought, perhaps, but what about, fdisk /mbr from command prompt? that should reset the Window$ boot loader. then you can use the MDK disc 1 rescue function & set up Lilo from there. unless you somehow wiped out the Window$ partition during MDK installation, all your XP stuff should still be there.
Chris

Better check out things before you try the fdisk route... I think it might not be the way to go yet. Don't do it in Linux yet is what I mean... I don't think you can on XP anyhow:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314058

Shows how to get back into xp recovery console

this is source of this info:

http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd...dview&id=215902

You are at a critical point so review your options carefully and get more advice if you're not sure and don't want to risk losing data. I am just offering some google help so you can see some options. The real pros like Ixthusdan, Tyme, Aru, bvc, Cannonfodder, and others are the ones with more experience in Mandrake. Everyone is here to help you all we can. Good luck!

fdisk is evil. The worst utiliy to use, unless all you want is something written by Gates. :wink:

Thanks again for all your efforts. Still no luck getting WinXP to load. I did use PM7 to partition the 80 gig drive into C (main WinXP), D (data), and E (swap). Mdk 9.1 is on a second 4 gig hard drive. I was asked to post 2 files, my /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab so here goes.

**begin /etc/lilo.conf**

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
vga=normal
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
compact
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hdc1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hdc1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hdc1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe devfs=nomount hdd=ide-scsi acpi=off"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

**end /etc/lilo.conf**
**begin /etc/fstab**

/dev/hdc1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdc6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs iocharsaet=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs iocharsaet=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfat iocharsaet=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdc5 swap swap defaults 0 0

**end /etc/fstab**

I have tried to use rescue disks made with PM however I keep getting an error when it tries to read from the second disk and asks to abort, retry, fail. I keep hitting retry but no joy. I've tried remaking the disks and the same result.

I tried the fdisk -l /dev/hda command while su root and this is what it told me:

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/hda1 * 1 9729 78148161 44 Unknown

What scares me is that it no longer sees the other partitions. I don't care about the windows swap partition I created, but the data partition is extremely important and I need to save it.

I have also used DiskDrak from the MDK Control Center and it represents the 80gig drive as a single, unpartitioned drive. One of the details is "Type: NTFS (or HPFS) (0x7).

I borrowed a WinXP Pro CD from my friend and will try to "repair" from the cd. If there are any other suggestions based on the info I just posted please reply. I am willing to try just about anything to get my data partition back.

Thanks

I am not running a NTFS system here, and don't know too much about them, but the "ro" in his fstab entry is not present in my fstab for /mnt/windows. (mine is VFAT) Would that keep it from mounting? What's that about?



Does that mean anything or is it normal in the case of NTFS?

Also the "iocharsaet" is misspelled: is that a typo or is it wrong in the file itself?
should be iocharset=iso8859-1

Hang in there!

kmack - the iocharset thing was just a typo. fstab has it spelled correctly. As far as the NTFS and "ro" stuff is concerned I don't know.

I did realize that I didn't specify the types of partitions I created with PartitionMagic 7. The C (winxp & programs) partition is primary and NTFS. D and E are logical. E (swap) is NTFS and D (data) is FAT32. I made the data FAT32 thinking I could share and work with my files and data easier while getting to know how Linux worked.

I'm begining to fear that with the changes I made to LILO configuration, it wrote over the partition table at the begining of hda and now have to figure out how to get the data without it.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again,
Joe

Have you tried removing lilo in rescue mode? Boot cd1>F1>rescue>Restore the Win mbr......or the like

....and you might try grub.....I use it....and there's a reason it's RH's default :wink: should be for all distros
mcc>Boot>DrakBoot>Configure

bvc -

Thanks for your suggestion, but I've tried all three boot loaders, LILO graphical menu, LILO text, and GRUB. I've also tried to do the rescue from cd1 by restoring the Win bootloader. All that did was start windows loading directly instead of going through the loader.

The problem is that once windows starts loading I get the error message and the system reboots by itself and does the same thing all over again in a loop. The only way to get the system to stop this process is to manually hold down the power button.

I'm at a complete loss about what to try next.

No later than this week, my friend (a windows only user) had a presentation to do Windows xp was refusing to start. So he called me and told him to boot the cd and do the 'repair' trick. He called me the day after to thanks me. The only thing you have to know is if the system ask you 'do you want to format' (or something like that) then this is not the 'repair' option. 'Repair' isn't destructive and all you datas will be there after that... don't worry.

MOttS

Try the suggestions, but, again, if linux does not see the data on a fat32 partition, something is fundamentally wrong with the partition table.

I think that booting with a windex disk and allowing it to do a thorough scandisk would be the safest first step. See what scan disk finds. Don't let it make changes, unless you are sure that the changes will not loose data. Repairing a bad sector would be ok. Finding millions of bytes of lost data would not be ok.

After MottS suggestion, as a last resort, try parted...it's on the cd's. I say last resort because it is an extremely powerfull yet unforgiving app. I once chose an option by command and as I hit Enter relized 'WAIT' ...too late....everything gone, so be sure to read, read, read, like I didn't ...well it sounded like a good choice :wink:...if I had read up like I should have, I wouldn't have lost everything.

I read through this thread, and while I don't have a definitive fix for you, I caught something that needs clarification...

In your fstab, you have:

/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda5 /mnt/win_d ntfs iocharset=iso8859-1,ro,umask=0 0 0
/dev/hda6 /mnt/win_e vfatlocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

This says that you have a NTFS C: drive, a NTFS D: drive and FAT32 E: drive. But you said that your D: data drive was FAT32 not NTFS to allow R/W on it from Win & Linux. So which one is the D: data drive? And E: is swap???

In order to minimize the chance of data loss, I'd do all I could to fix things using M$ stuff 'til you run out of options. If you can get into Windoze rescue or to any kind of system prompt, try running chkdisk on the D: drive. It will probably tell you there is no D:, if so try C: If the only problem on the drive is the partition table, chkdisk *should* be able to fix it without losing your data. I ran into this problem lately and chkdisk did save the data, but made C: & D: into one C: partition doing it. But that was on a system where C: & D: were both FAT32. If your C: is NTFS and D: really is FAT32 I'm not sure what chkdisk will decide to do about it. If you're really living right it might find some clue about what the partitions were (like realizing there are both NTFS & FAT32 files on the drive, but don't expect much, we're talkin' 'bout a M$ utility here...) and fix your C: system partition. But if I were in your shoes right now I'd be pretty happy just to get the stuff on D: back and screw the XP install. You don't need it anyway, right? If somehow the D: FAT32 drive got only converted to NTFS(?), it shouldn't have trashed the data, just changed the file system. If somehow you actually reformatted the drive to NTFS, either with PM or DiskDrake, you're probably screwed.

If DiskDrake is now seeing your entire 80G (hda) drive as one unpartitioned drive that's because the partition table is gone. DiskDrake, which reads the Windoze partition info (if it's there) to setup, not the file system itself, of course then knows nothing about your partitions.

Give up on Partition Magic. I've helped several people lately with straightening out messes that Partition Magic made. Often it seems users just get confused by the none-too-intuitive interface of PM, but the program really just kinda sucks as a whole. It's bad enough with Windoze and kinda useless with Linux since PM-7 has no Linux support. PM-8 supports ext3 only, and poorly. Use Disdrake for formatting Linux partitions, it handles NTFS fine. If you must have a Windoze partitioning tool, use Acronis Partiton Expert. It's cheaper and all-around better than PM, including full support for all common Linux file systems like ReiserFS, ext3, etc.

I've only used PM7 (still do and I use reiserfs for linux) and it does have linux support, but only for ext2 and linux swap. To say it has a 'none-too-intuitive interface' is :shock: . I'd love to no one better. Diskdrake? I don't think so! :wink: JMO

bvc said:
"I've only used PM7 (still do and I use reiserfs for linux) and it does have linux support, but only for ext2 and linux swap."

Yeah, I forgot PM7 does have ext2-only support, I was thinkin' they added that in PM8. Oops...

"To say it has a 'none-too-intuitive interface' is :shock: . I'd love to no one better. Diskdrake? I don't think so! :wink: JMO "

Whatever - I've fixed some problems lately that were clearly because the user got confused by the PM interface. I like the Partition Expert interface better, as GUIs go. Anyway Partition Expert is about half of what PM costs and has full Linux file system support.

DiskDrake is definetly kinda klutzy, but it works. As with any partitioning tool, ya just gotta be *real* careful!

Hey, we're kinda gettin' away from the problem at hand here...any other suggestions?

PM8 has Reiser, Ext2+3 and Swap abilities.

James

Thanks for all your suggestions so far. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to gain access to the data on the 80gig primary drive.

I have gone ahead and reinstalled WinXP HE on the 4gig hard drive that Mandrake was installed to. I have made this drive the master and reset the jumpers on the 80gig drive to make it the slave drive.

My BIOS detects both drives and correctly identifies the 4gig as master and the 80gig as slave. However, when I get into WinXP, windows explorer only shows the new drive and the cd drive as entries in My Computer. The original drive is not listed. When I go into the device manager, the 80gig drive is listed under disk drives. Any ideas as to what's going on, or what I should try next?

Thanks for your continued support.
Joe

Did you read this How to Dual Boot? It might contain something helpful!

In trying to diagnose hdd problems I came across Gibson Research Company (grc.com) and their SpinRite 5 product. They told me that their product only deals with lower-level read-write hardware type problems. They directed me to data recovery software that try to rebuild FAT and partition table information.

Their three suggestions were:

"EasyRecovery", manufactured by Ontrack Data International
http://www.ontrack.com

"GetDataBack" manufactured by Runtime Software LLC
http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

"Do It Yourself DataRecovery" web site http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/.

Of course, for liability reasons, they also made it clear they don't endorse or specifically recommend any of them.

Does anyone use such software or heard of it? Have any of you heard of these particular recommendations before? Any other options out there you may have heard of?

Thanks,
Joe

This sounds like you need to assign a drive letter to it. If XP is like win2k, right click on my computer and select manage. Disk management should be an option there where you will be able to fix this (as admin).

I had previously used powerquest's lost and found to recover data from a bad partition. Looking here, http://www.powerquest.com/products/discontinued.cfm I see it is now discontinued. You may still be able to find it tho. (Wondering now... what is the legalities of software such as this?

Final Update

Finally able to rescue my data! After several days of trying everything that was suggested, and anything else I could think of, I came across http://www.partition-recovery.com. They have this DOS based program that rebuilds f'd-up partition tables and MBR. I spoke to the tech support guys and they said it actually writes to the drive new partition info that should resurrect the drive. I wasn't feeling brave enough to have it write to the drive and potentially overwrite or destroy the data I needed to recover, so they pointed me to http://www.file-recovery.net.

There I found a Windows based program that ONLY reads from the messed up drive and lets you copy what it finds to a new hdd or removable media. SO, I bought a new drive, installed WinXP on it, installed the messed up drive as a slave drive, and was able to copy the data from it to my new drive!

I was very impressed and happy.

Anyways, thanks to all who offered there assistance and knowledge. I'm sure I'll be back once I sort out my windows system and am ready to try dual-booting with MDK 9.1 again. Also, if anyone finds themselves in a similar situation and would like more detail on what I did, don't hesitate to ask.

Joe

Congratulations! Most of us had to get rid of it ourselves.