Fun little dual booting issue i got myself into :D

[PoisonWorm]

Aight, fisrt of all, I'm looking for some KDE 3.3.1 RPM's for MDK 10.1 Community...Konstruct died on me and plus i want to UPGRADE KDE, not have two copies of it....

Second, and this is the biggy...
In order to get my system working, i had to switch my master drive to a 2 GIG drive, and my 40 as secondary...thats fine...obviously tho, i still need dual boot for a couple things, so I'm wondering if anyone has an answer to this fun issue...

I install, windows, XP pro, works fine...13 gig partition on my 40 gig (slave), and windows wants to put a few boot files on the master (2 gig, gave it 50MB to play with)...again, windows works fine...

till i install linux (any distro...) now linux works great...no issues (other than m gamepad not working in games, but whatever, long story, not important)...i try booting to windows XP now (lilo gives me 3 windows options...all 3 die, all 3 linked to separate part's) One just reboots (its a temo drive, no biggie) but the one on the HDA just kindof sits there, doesnt pass off to winxp....the HDB1 (13 gb) give me a big ol' "windows cannot find thie following file, and cannot start" "c:\windws\system32\hal.dll" "plz install this file here and try again)"... or the general gist of it...

wow....sorry for the novel, but i hope to get this working...any input appreciated....any questions, you can post here and ask or email me thru the board...

[lordnothing]

the only question i have an answer for is the KDE one... contrary to popular belief, KDE is not one package/program.. it is an application suite of the type known as a desktop environment. most of the time when you see a package for any package manager/distro labelled just 'kde-<version', it's an empty file that depends upon all of the programs that most people think of as a KDE installation... so if you really want RPM's for KDE 3.3.x, you'll have to find all of the applications you want to upgrade, and possibly build an empty RPM that depends upon them (or find one) to install them all in one shot. and the first place i would check is http://kde.org

[PoisonWorm]

That much I've found out the fun way...KDE.org has all the info i need, it just doesnt have the 20-somethnig RPM's that make up KDE 3.3.1...only the source code....which, as i mentioned.. doesnt compile properly....aka...dies horribly...aka...not going to happen....so either i gotta get my hands on some spec files and build my own, or wait for someone else to do it...lol...i wish i new what i was doing....

anywho, yeah...thats all and well, i can deal with it....ill figure somethni out...by biggest concern is my dualbooting blowing up in my face...lol

[lordnothing]

can you post your grub.conf file?? maybe there's an error there....

[PoisonWorm]

Its actually LILO (mandrake 10.1, before you say anything about LILO Vs Grub, note grub was doing the same thnig

# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

default="linux"
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hdb2
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdb3 splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hdb2
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdb3"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hdb2
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdb3 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/hda3
label="windows1"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/hdb1
label="windows2"
table=/dev/hdb
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80

neither one of those windows ones boots, and this is the file, as made by Mandrake 10.1 setup...

[Mannix]

i have a similar problem i created 2 partitions on one drive but instead of resizing the partition i reformated the windows backup partition so i didnt need to reformat the drive (still got everything backed up to disk though) and installed mandrake 10.1. so when i boot up and choose windows when lilo comes up i get some error saying hal.dll cannot be found. it turns out this also has happened with win 2000 and Xp dual boot set ups http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm has some info not sure it willl help though. please help.

[Stormblazer]

It would appear this is a windows problem and not a linux problem. hmmm... I suggest reinstalling the whole thing, windows first, then linux.
I understand GRUB and LILO had the same problem, again pointing to windows itself as the issue, but I really reccomend using GRUB in this situation so you can play with the config file without needing a rescue CD if you mess it up.

[PoisonWorm]

Yeah, i actullay got it fixed a little while back, just forgot to mention it here

what seemed to have happened is as follows --- By bios for some reason did not like GRUB/LILO booting off of my 40GB drive...reversing the drives and putting a 2 gig as master, boot partition, etc, then installing windows/linux to my 40GB drive, it now works flawlessly, albiet slowly (5400RPM drive booting vs a 7200RPM drive = slowwww) lol...but yeah it works, etc

thanx for the reply, but it seems to have been due to either lilo/grub or my bios not liking my 40 gigs drive params

[Mannix]

this is the full error message :"Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt : <Windows root>\System32\hal.dll
please reinstall a copy of this file.

just an idea: when the error pops up it says that <windows root>/system32/hal.dll is whats missing, but isn't system32 in <windows root>\windows? so maybe the boot loader or whatever's causing the error looking in the wrong place? also is there anyway to install the windows boot loader? little brother threw a hissy fit 'cause he cant use winmx so its either get the dual boot thing working or revert to a windows only (have to share the computer with the rest of the family).

[PoisonWorm]

i had the same error message....exact same file and all

i had to a) swap my slave/master drives, and b) format all drives, then install XP its asks for a smal partition on the first drive (i gave it 30 gigs) and its happy, and then li install linux...detects both windows partitions...select the first one "HDA1" or whatever...and it SHOULD boot...

thats provided you got dual HD's ***posts and reads back***