Arch Linux

stabele

Member

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 101

boot from windows extended

I had dualboot windows + ubuntu on laptop, vista was on first partition (primary), no problem to boot. Than  I installed windows xp instead vista and arch (boot partition + LVM partition) instead of ubuntu. Not t sure when it happened, but windows xp are now on extended partition and I am unable to boot - I got infamous error 12 - invalid device selected message. I checked a lot of things, reinstalled grub to mbr, many variants of /boot/grub/menu.lst - tried variants with root instead rootnoverify, without makeactive and so. Now I am loosing hope and probably going to reinstal windows, but if anybody have some hint what to try, I would be very thankfull.

fdisk /dev/sda:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000080

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               2        3824    30708247+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda2   *       19450       19457       64260   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            3825       19449   125507812+  83  Linux
/dev/sda5   *           2        3824    30708216    7  HPFS/NTFS

/boot/grub/menu.lst:

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows XP 3
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive
chainloader +1

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

title Windows XP 5
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows XP remaped 3
map (hd0,0) (hd0,3)
map (hd0,3) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows XP remaped 4
map (hd0,0) (hd0,4)
map (hd0,4) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows XP remaped 5
map (hd0,0) (hd0,5)
map (hd0,5) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

darthaxul

Member

Registered: 2008-09-24

Posts: 156

Re: boot from windows extended

you must install in order xp,then install vista, then install any of ur linux distros.
you can choose to have ntldr in mbr or grub, its generally easier to let ntldr controll the mbr and let grub be on a fat32 partition about 120mb boot partition.
you can do it in any order u want, but unless u really know how ntldr installs,u just stick with the order.