Grub, windows refuse to boot.

faelar · 2008-05-02 09:51:20

I installed two windows XP on the drive to easily backup all the files from the older one to the new one.
Windows has a nice bootloader, it is easy to choose between eeh... "windows xp pro" and "windows xp pro"
Anyway, something strange, the new system was installed as sda5 where the first one was sda1.
Everything was working, I saved all my folders, and removed the old windows to install Arch.
Since this time I cannot boot on the ntfs partition anymore.

Here the output for fdisk -l (I also have an IDE drive that's why it prints sd[b])

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x46b746b6

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         249     2000061   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2           12749       38912   210162330    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb3   *         250       12748   100398217+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb5           12749       38912   210162298+   7  HPFS/NTFS

My first question is, on which partition the boot flag must be set ?
And why is there two partitions (2 and 5) which look the same ?

The menu.lst file :

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/9351c114-655f-41f8-864e-d14b4f17b113 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/9351c114-655f-41f8-864e-d14b4f17b113 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

# (1) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Any help is welcome

Last edited by faelar (2008-05-02 09:52:09)

pogeymanz · 2008-05-02 12:16:40

Your problem is that Windows needs to be at the front of the disk or it wont work. Yeah, Windows sucks away your freedom, even when partitioning your drive...

Don't worry about those two partitions. The reason it looks like that is because sdb2 is an Extended Volume, which doesn't actually take up all that space. You'll notice that your other Windows partition is the same size. What that means is that your sdb5 takes up the whole extended partition. Think of it like a container.

Anyway, that doesn't all matter now, because you need to get Windows to the front of the disk.

Raisuli · 2008-05-03 03:23:33

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual … 02fWindows

Maybe this will help.

faelar · 2008-05-03 11:05:02

I tried to map (hd0,4) (hd0,0), I also replaced 4 by 1, but the system won't boot.
If I try this from the second drive (I would like to be able to remove this drive, so it's juste for testing), it displays an error about bios, volume size etc... (I saw somewhere that it's normal because my partition is more than 8Go).

Last edited by faelar (2008-05-03 11:06:04)

wonder · 2008-05-03 12:06:47

if you have windows installed on sdb5 then you need to put in menu.lst

rootnoverify hd(1,4)

or if this doesn't work append to menu.lst

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

Last edited by wonder (2008-05-03 12:11:50)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-02 09:51:20

Grub, windows refuse to boot.

#2 2008-05-02 12:16:40

Re: Grub, windows refuse to boot.

#3 2008-05-03 03:23:33

Re: Grub, windows refuse to boot.

#4 2008-05-03 11:05:02

Re: Grub, windows refuse to boot.

#5 2008-05-03 12:06:47

Re: Grub, windows refuse to boot.

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