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Can't boot windows, looking for options

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7 replies

by jgolden

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Well, I have 2 IDE HD's. I installed Windows Home on first one (C:), then installed Windows Professional to second(D:). Been running that way for awhile.

Decided I wanted to replace 1st HD with Windows Home on it with OpenSUSE (no debates please). Now I cannot boot to windows.

I have configure grub to point to 2nd drive partition 1. I did not install grub to the MBR, but to /boot. When it first tried to boot, I got missing ntldr. So I copied all the correct files to D. But now when it starts booting to windows, the screen just goes black and nothing happens.

I have a bootable CD (FIXNTLDR) that I can boot to my windows partition from, but I would like to not have to use the CD. I have copied all the correct files (ntldr, .ini files, etc..) to the root of D, but it still doesn't work.

Any sugesstions?

Thanks for the help.

7 replies

by thechas

What you need is a boot manager.

Windows was taking care of the boot manager duties on it's own using ntldr and boot.ini to allow you to select operating systems after the boot process started.

I'm not up to date on what is a reliable boot manager to use. Obviously, commercial utilities like System Commander will do the job well. But, that violates the concept of using open source software.

You might start looking for an open source boot manager at www.sourceforge.net

Source Forge is a great resource for open source software.

Another place to look is the Open CD and Ultimate Boot Disk projects.

One version of the Ultimate Boot CD has a host of Linux tools. The other Windows tools.

I suspect that once you have a boot manager up and running you will need to follow the instructions for the boot manager and perform a repair install of XP Pro.

Chas

by jgolden

Thanks for the reply, but grub is a boot manger(loader).

I just tried pointing my BIOS to boot from HDD-1 instead of HDD-0 to see if GRUB was not configured right. But it seems to be, as the system responds the same way.

by thechas

I noticed when I searched around the boot disk and CD sites I listed that GRUB is a boot manager.

I think the next step then is the second part of my answer.

You need to boot into grub and then perform a repair install of XP.

You cannot just copy or move the XP boot files like you could with Windows 95 or 98. The XP boot files need to be properly configured and registered.

Chas

by nentech

What type of partitions do you have on both drives?
Primary or extended?
If they are primary are they active?
How are the drives connected?
Primary or slave?
Sata drives are all masters but some bios will show them in a master, slave set-up

What is in the boot.ini file on the Win XP partition?

Hard drives have a boot sector
Partitions also have a boot sector
One of those boot sectors may be damaged

Col

by jgolden

Both are IDE (PATA) on primary chain "c" is the first drive or master (which was changed to linux). Second drive "d" is the second drive or slave (which is the windows os). Both have only one primary partition which is active. Well technically the master has 4 partitions now: /boot, /, swap, /home. Under windows it had a single active partition.

The boot.ini file looks like this.
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

It is the only entry.

I found that I cannot boot from a windows CD, unless I unplug the master hd (linux os) and them make the windows hd the master.

I did boot into windows setup from this and tried to repair, but it then see it as "c" and not "d". I started to run fixmbr, but it had a warning that it may make the partitions unreadable so I wanted to make sure I had a good backup first.

I can still boot from my cd and boot into windows, which gives me hope that I can make this work.

Thanks for the help.

by nentech

The first partition on the first hard drive is not always C
It can be D or E or just about any letter of the alphabet except A and B

You can try this
Make the Windows XP drive the master or first(boot) hard drive

Change your boot.ini file to look like this

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Don?t forget to keep a backup of the old boot.ini file

The number zero in rdisk(0) is the first hard drive
The number one in partition(1) is the first entry in the partition table not the order on the disk

Try to boot Windows XP without a boot loader
If that works then install grub in the boot partition of the XP hard drive
You may have to reinstall Linux

Don?t worry if all else fails you can create a small Windows XP boot partition on the Linux drive and use that to load XP
It only has to be big enough to hold the files that were in the main directory not the folders

Some info for you
If you are setting up a computer with multiple OS
Don?t remove any partitions before a Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista Partition
They remember what disk and partition they were on

Also it is best to set-up any Microsoft OS before you set-up Linux etc
When you set-up windows hide any non windows partitions or leave space for the others

Also the first partition on the hard drive is not always the first entry in the partition tables
Partition magic is good at reorganising partition tables and changing the boot.ini file
Even if you don?t want it to

I always think of hard drives in the boot order
Boot or first drive, then second drive, then third drive, and so on

Good luck hope this helps
Col

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