GRUB dual boot problem, WinXP vanished.

[dhughes]

I dual boot WinXP(Pro) and Debian 3.1, the disk was partitioned into three partitions using Partition Magic. Windows was installed first then Debian.

Everything was great until few weeks ago, when I turned on my system Windows(hda1) was missing from the list of Operating Systems to choose to boot to, Linux(hda6) was there.

I went to the "boot" utility in the KDE K menu and put Windows back in the list. It was going great until it happened again about a week later. This time when I went to the boot utility and browsed for hda1 it wasn't there. I ended up using the GAG boot manager which allowed me to at least get Windows back but it didn't recognize Linux. I removed GAG, my system returned to booting straight to Windows, no graphical boot manager list of Operating Systems to choose from.

I read up on GRUB and I re-entered Windows into /boot/grub/menu.lst in a text editor using a Slax lived cd. I was then, again, able to choose Linux or Windows but Linux failed to load except for the command line, I was promped to use fsck. It checked the disk ok, I rebooted but the same thing again, Windows ok but with Linux fsck and reboot.

I searched around and ended up back here, in a post someone mentioned to someone having a similar problem to try:

sudo chroot /mnt/hda6 grub-install /dev/hda

That worked! Linux loaded normally, until I rebooted and was back to being prompted to do fsck again over and over.

Do I have a problem with partitons where GRUB is because Linux is on a logical drive of an extended partiton? GRUB has a weird way of labeling disks and partitons.

At the moment I can choose Win XP, Linux or Linux (recovery) they are on the list. Windows starts fine but Linux goes to the command line because of possible errors that fsck can't seem to fix.

[vidd]

are you able to load KDE from that command line? Are you using SARGE (stable) or ETCH (testing) or SID (unstable)?

[dhughes]

startx at the command line doesn't work if that's what you mean. I don't know if I could do that anyway since I have to log in at the GDM first (I have an account set up for my Dad too). Although I don't know if startx means it starts the GUI or KDE; my default window manager choice.

I can access files with no problem, I can see my /home directory, so whatever the problem is it can't be that bad.


The distribution I'm using is Sarge. It's the stable version, no experimental versions or anything like that.

The date is off too I noticed, the day and month are right but the time is off by four hours, I set it the last time before I ran fsck. hwclock -r shows the correct time, and in Windows the time is right too.

[lestoil]

Can you post /boot/grub/menu.lst? Maybe someone can see a fixable error. Good luck.

[dhughes]

I tried to cat /boot/grub/menu.lst > mygrub.txt but I can't write to hda6, it's set to read only. There is a command listed that is supposed to allow read-write to hda6 but it doesn't work, it did before, I'm not sure why it won't now.

I can view menu.lst in Windows using Ext2 IFS 1.10b for Windows XP but the formatting is lost and I'm not sure what goes where. I know '#' precedes comments or anything you don't want to be recognized, but it's still messed up.

As far as I can tell it hasn't changed other than the fact the part that boots Windows was deleted for some reason.

[oz]

The Windows section of GRUB should look something like this, depending on your setup:

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

HTH...

ozar

[dhughes]

Yeah Ozar, that's something close to what I added. Everything is the same except I just have

root (hd0,0)

instead of

rootnoverify     (hd0,0)

I think Windows disappearing from menu.lst in Grub all by itself, twice, and the possibly damaged file system may mean it's toast.

I can just wipe it with Partition Magic in Windows and reinstall but I'd really like to try and solve this, preferably on my own, but with help if necessary. It's been two or three weeks now!

Maybe my partitions are just too messed up, I have Windows ( C: ), another one for Windows Programs ( D: drive), Linux (and however many partitions it makes) and a Linux Swap partition all on a 100GB drive.

I'll try some more stuff I won't give up just yet.