HELP! Mdk 9.1 hosed my WinXP partition

[Guest jneg123]

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 -

"autochck program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK."

 

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.

[Floyd]

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.

[Ixthusdan]

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.

[MottS]

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

[MottS]

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

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

 

:mystilol:

[Guest jneg123]

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

[Ixthusdan]

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.

[MottS]

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

[Guest mkbiyer]

You don't need to reinstall Windows since only a couple (maybe 1, 2 or 3 or whatever) of files were destroyed or corrupted.  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.

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 !

 

:!:

[Guest jneg123]

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."

[tyme]

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

 

post your /etc/fstab file

[kmack]

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!

 

:)

[Ixthusdan]

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!

[kmack]

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.

[chris z]

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