Booting option to WIN XP

[sudix]

yes i had 2 Win XP installed in D: and E: drives and both were working.
long ago i even had a Win XP installed in C: as well that later started having issues. hence, Windows that was installed in C: was not used very lately(which was later formatted to instal SuSe).

can say, I had Win installed in almost all the partitions of the disk (C, D and E).

[devils casper]

now this is a BIG problem. you were using Windows Boot Loader to boot up Windows installed in Logical Partitions. GRUB doesn't work in this kind of setup. i have to check if there is any other way to boot up Windows ...
meanwhile, download SmartBootManager, burn image to CD, boot up from it... check if recognizes SuSe and Windows and allow you to boot up both....





Casper

[sudix]

Thnx Casper for ur researched responses !!!

instead of this should I go ahead and install Windows in the primary partition(c and then again install SuSe in the logical partition???

if this works, i wont bother to feel the pain of installing SuSe again.
but let me know, what all should i need to make sure this in the entire process??

[devils casper]

if you install Windows in Primary Partition then SuSe installer will definitely recognize it and you will have an option for Windows in GRUB screen.

Install Windows in Primary Partition. create free/unpartitioned space in Extended Partition. Linux doesn't care about Partition Type. you can install Linux in Logical partition too. i have three Linux Distros + Windows Xp in my machine. Windows in Primary Partitions. one FAT32 Logical for data sharing, 3 Logical Partitions ( 1 for each distro ) + 1 SWAP partition.



Good Luck !
Casper

[jaymezb]

Hi all,

I have been having some trouble booting windows XP from grub and am getting this error:

13 : Invalid or unsupported executable format

I have tried editing menu.lst and using FIXBOOT on the windows recovery console with no joy. Could you please look over my setup and see if i'm missing anything.

# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        6534    52484323+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            6535       12271    46082452+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3           12272       20023    62267940    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5           12781       20023    58179366    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6           12272       12780     4088479+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

/dev/hda1 is my windows xp partition
/dev/hda2 fedora zod

# cat /boot/grub/menu.lst 
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
#          root (hd1,1)
#          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
#          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdc
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,1)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2869.fc6)
        root (hd1,1)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb all-generic-ide noirqdebug quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2868.fc6)
        root (hd1,1)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2868.fc6 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb all-generic-ide noirqdebug quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2868.fc6.img
title Windows XP
        rootnoverify (hd1,0)
        chainloader +1

[devils casper]

hi jaymezb !

do you have two Harddisks? grub.conf file is referring to second harddisk. post the contents of /boot/grub/device.map file.





Casper

[jaymezb]

Thanks for the quick reply

Yes i do have two hard drives:

$ cat /boot/grub/device.map 
# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd1)     /dev/hda
(hd0)     /dev/hdc

/dev/hda <-- where the two os's are
/dev/hdc <-- one ext3 partition for storage

I cropped a bit from the bottom of fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hdc: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdc1   *           1       20023   160834716   83  Linux

[jaymezb]

I am no longer getting error 13 from grub after carrying out the following things in this order on the windows recovery console:

chdsk /p

ok

fixboot

ok

bootcfg /rebuild
error: Failed to add ...

It looks as though this too much of a windows probelm to be posting on here, but if anyone does know, please post a reply.

I think i'm just going to give up, i was only using windows XP to run call of duty 2. Think i'll just get it working in wine instead, windows just isn't worth it. From the limited amount of obscure information i've read so far, it could be a hardware or partition table probelm. But i think i'll never know what with with the usless tools available in the recovery console and windows users "if its broke, just reinstall" philosophy.

[sudix]

casper, i need ur attention again !!!

i am unable to install Win XP now...after i insert the bootable CD and the system starts 'Checking the system configuration', the monitor goes black with nothing on it(although the hard disk seems to be working). i tried for almost 3 times(with diff CDs) with no joy.
wat could be the issue??? and wat to do next??

[devils casper]

you need Windows 98 Bootable Floppy now. download it from www.bootdisk.com
boot up from Floppy and execute

A:\> fdisk /mbr

Windows Installation CD will work after executing that code.





Casper