LILO problem for dual boot [solved]

[Guest Philip Jones]

I have a Dell Dimension 4550 with two hard drives; Windows XP is on the original one, and I had had Libranet Linux on the second one. There is also a Windows partition on the second drive for overflow storage, backups, etc.

 

I tried installing Mandriva Limited Edition 2006 last night to the second hard drive, replacing the Libranet install, blithely assuming that it would successfully set up the boot loader as Libranet had done. It appeared to do so, but when I rebooted the machine, I saw the letters LIL, then a long pause, and then this message:

Error: Duplicated Volume ID.

It then goes on to offer me three Mandriva options, but no Windows.

 

While I'd love to be able to ditch Windows, I'm not quite ready to do that, and I have a lot of stuff that I need to be able to get to. I like the look of Mandriva, but I may have to reinstall Libranet because I know it handles the dual boot successfully. Before I do that, however, are there any suggestions for a cleaner way to resolve this problem?

[tyme]

can you boot into the mandriva install? if so, please post your /etc/lilo.conf

[Guest Philip Jones]

I'm afraid not; my impatience got the better of me, and I decided to reinstall Libranet, because I knew it would properly handle the dual boot situation. It did that, but somehow the meddling with the Master Boot Record (I'm guessing) has upset a Norton utility I recently installed on the Windows side, because I can't get very far into the Windows boot-up before I get a message that autocheck (or some variant spelling) can't be found.

 

So I've shot myself in the foot twice! And I can't reasonably expect Mandriva users to sympathize or help me. Sorry to have bothered you.

[tyme]

we sympathize and are willing to help, always ;) you can post windows issues in talk-talk and people will try to help, you can also post questions about other linux distributions in the similarly named section.

 

for your windows problem, i would suggest trying two things. first, if you have your xp install disk, boot and and at one point it will ask if you want a recovery console (or something similar), if you go into the recovery console and get to the C:\> prompt, do "fixboot" and see if that clears up your booting issue.

 

if not, you can try "fixmbr" but note that this will rewrite the MBR and remove LILO, if you do this you will have to use a libranet disc to boot into it and reinstall LILO.

[Guest Philip Jones]

Both good suggestions, and I tried the first. It seemed to start up promisingly, but pretty soon the screen went dark and the CD drive stopped spinning. But then I realized that the problem is not really with the MBR, as far as either Windows OR Linux is concerned; theproblem is (I suspect) that there's something that Norton wrote to the MBR to run some sort of check (AUTOCHECK) during the boot to make sure thinks were in order, and it is THAT missing piece that is upsetting Norton.

 

I've gone to Symantec's Web site and logged a problem; they say they'll get back to me in 48 to 72 hours. That's a long time to keep my fingers crossed.

 

PHJ

[tyme]

Also check your BIOS to make sure it's not doing some sort of MBR check, that could be a problem too. Seems strange that Norton would be able to stop the system from booting :huh:

 

I've never come across that before, but I guess it's possible :)

[pmpatrick]

I haven't used Norton for some time as it was nothing but troubles for me and a resource hog. IIRC Norton runs an mbr check on boot to detect if any changes were made to the mbr. The purpose is to check for boot sector viruses. If Norton detected that the mbr had changed, it would give a warning message on boot and ask if you wanted to restore the original mbr from a backup. Again, this is all from memory.

A couple things you can try while waiting. First, try booting windows in safe mode by hitting F8 at boot before windows starts to load. Second, if you made the Norton boot floppies, try booting off those and see if you can do something in there to stop it from halting the windows boot.

[Guest Philip Jones]

I wrote to Symantec about this problem, and they replied by quoting the EULA or some description of the product (Norton Go-Back 4.0), where it is explicitly stated that it doesn't work with dual booting if one of the operating systems isn't some flavor of Windows.

 

Oddly, though, that was not my experience: I installed Norton's Go-Back 4.0 when I already had the successfully functioning GRUB dual boot under Libranet, and it worked fine. The only thing that tripped me up was installing Mandriva, which had to alter the MBR when it set up LILO; THAT was what upset Norton, I'm thinking.

 

I'll try booting Windows in Safe Mode and see how far I get. In any case, I ought to be able to see the Windows HD from the Linux HD, and with some luck, skill (yet to be acquired) and patience I can perhaps rescue some of my critical stuff from the Windows drive and burn it to CDs. Once all that is done, I should be able to re-establish a Windows installation on that drive, starting over from scratch. That ordeal may be the push I need to get me to shift my weight from the Windows side to the Linux side. If I do go down that path, and if I end up using the Mandriva install, I'm sure I'll be back often.

[Ixthusdan]

I did not see this before.

It is a bit late, but in case you have missed the point, do not use this feature of Symantec. Personally, I stopped using Symantec in windows some time ago when it misbehaved in network situations and the cost of a subscription was more than buying new software!

 

Don't worry about lilo or linux, We can get that back rather easily. Put in your windows installation disk and perform a reinstall. Do not perform a format. Let windows fix windows. Your notion to save data via linux before performing this procedure is a good one and can also be easily done. But, windows dhould be able to reinstall without destroying your data. And get rid of any trace of Norton.

 

To recover lilo, simply boot with the Mandriva install cd, hit escape and type "rescue". On the menu selection choose to reinstall a bootloader. It will find both linux and windows. Install it to the mbr. Done.

[Guest Philip Jones]

Don't worry about lilo or linux, We can get that back rather easily. Put in your windows installation disk and perform a reinstall. Do not perform a format. Let windows fix windows. Your notion to save data via linux before performing this procedure is a good one and can also be easily done. But, windows dhould be able to reinstall without destroying your data.

I tried reinstalling Windows in this way. First I see a message saying that Windows is already in the process of being upgraded, do I want to continue? I press <Enter> to do so, and briefly see the beginning of the Windows boot. Then the screen goes dark, and eventually the CD-ROM drive stops spinning; it seems as if nothing more is going to happen. A couple of times I've lost patience at this point and done a cold boot of the machine. Is it possible that a longer wait will see something actually happen?

[Ixthusdan]

The only time I ever have seen that particular sequence was when a friend attempted to install windows in a non-active partition. Windows is very picky and gets easily confused. Have you messed with partition status? BTW, I had to recover his data onto an external drive by booting with a knoppix cd and then reformat the partition and complete the install. Windows would go into protection and stop. That is as far as I could force it to go.

[Guest Philip Jones]

I am finally able to close this thread (not that anybody but me had been worried that it was unresolved); I can report that this morning I was able to boot in Windows again for the first time since March 6 or so. In case anyone else finds him/herself in a similar situation, I'll tell you what I did.

 

The key was a program called TESTDISK, which is available here: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

It isn't exactly intuitive to run, but on the Web site the author suggests that if you don't know what you're doing, run an analysis and send him the log file that it produces. I did that, and in about 24 hours I had a reply back with a very concise set of instructions: do this, that, this, one more thing, and you're done.

 

I did those things and at first was not successful. But then I thought to edit my GRUB configuration, and once I'd done that, I was back in business.

 

Thanks to all who helped by suggesting things to do. I don't even remember where I learned of TESTDISK, but special thanks to whoever led me there.

 

I've learned a lot in the last few weeks about life in Linux; if it weren't for the considerable investment in time and resources that I have on the Windows side, I can see how I might actually survive in Linux if I had to. Some day maybe I'll have the luxury of making a clean break; but now I know that if such a thing is thrust upon me, I'll be able to get back up and running.

[Ixthusdan]

I am sure that you have heard it before, or not, but we all "learned" windows and we easily forget the weird learning curve there. I personally think linux is easier to learn as long as you don't think you are learning a variation of windows!