Help with dual boot system...

[Jac01]

I have a laptop that was dual booted with openSUSE 10.1, and windows xp home... was using GRUB as boot manager.

To make a long story short... I was an idiot and deleted and merged the linux partitions back into windows and viola!! Cool new error message next time I boot my laptop telling me "invalid partition tables" I have used ERD '05 to no avail, I don't particularly want to rebuild windows, even though all of my important docs are on the d: partion and I wont lose them if I rebuild it... any ideas?

[devils casper]

did you merge windows main OS partition with Linux'? you can check harddisk's integrity using any LiveCD.



casper

[smolloy]

Can you give more details as to exactly what you did, and what happened when you did it.

I may be able to help with this as I have done something similar myself more than once!!!

[Jac01]

I had a laptop dual booted with xp home and suse 10.1 w/ grub as my boot manager... within windows I had c:/ partition with my windows install, and D:/ partion with all my saved progs, docs ect... in linux I dont remember my partion names, but I had 3 linux partions, root part, the swap part, and my home part... but anyways...I booted into windows, and used partition magic to merge the linux partions into the D:/ part in my windows install and when I rebooted the laptop the error message that I got was "invalid partition table" and when I booted into my windows install disk, the windows repair option would not work (quick repair, where you start a windows install and it detects that you have a "prior windows installation" and asks if you want to "repair this installation, or install a new copy of windows"). Quick repair could not find the prior windows install. I used the manual repair option and it was able to boot into the windows install, and run fixboot and fixmbr which didn't fix it...

[devils casper]

you merged D: drive with /root partition of Linux. both partitions had different FileSystems. chances of data recovery are very low. boot up from any LiveCD and check if it shows new partition.




casper

[smolloy]

It depends on exactly how the "merging" was done. If the partitions were first erased, and then the the D partition was extended to take up their space, then it should still work.

Can you tell us what exactly you mean by "merging"?

[Jac01]

I used partion magic to delete the partitions then used disk manager to add the free space to an existing partion (my windows D:/ partition) I am not trying to recover data from my merged partions as I had nothing of importance on my linux partitions... I still can see my windows partitions, and recover the data if I need to, I am trying to rebuild my boot partion and fix my mbr so that I can boot my machine into windows... I moved my linux install onto a different computer...

[devils casper]

I am trying to rebuild my boot partion and fix my mbr so that I can boot my machine into windows...

boot through Windows installation CD and select Repair(R). type 'FIXMBR' at prompt.
reboot.......
in case, windows CD doesn't work, download windows 98 bootable floppy from www.bootdisk.com create bootable floppy and boot through it. type 'fdisk /mbr'.




casper