Linux

I had wanted to avoid using LILO on the MBR because I had never used it with W2K before and I didn't know what would happen -- and the W2K partitions have stuff on them that I need to use, navigation stuff and so on that so far I only have Windows programs to use. So I thought the best setup would be to keep the NT boot loader and boot from floppy for now and maybe later install LILO to the Linux partition and add a line to the NT boot loader to send it there. But maybe this is the time to experiment a little and give LILO a try. So far I have edited the boot.ini file to read partition(7) and then (8), both with no result except the same ntoskrnl.exe error. I didn't know whether to count the extended partition as a seperate partition to be counted, or just the logical partitions inside the extended partition. But both methods seem to be wrong if I have counted right.

I would like to help you to restore your win2k back, it's a common error from windows 2000 because of changes in partition number of HD. You have to edit boot.ini files to tell whereis the Partition for Windows 2000. First of all You need to know which partition is belong to your windows. Run this command from linux

fdisk -l /dev/hda
( to list all partition in your hd)

Then look at the list, find which one belong to win2k which has HPFS/NTFS file system, the first one on the top of the list should get number 0,second is 1, the 3rd is 2 and so on. So which number is your HPFS/NTFS partition.

After you figure that out, edit your boot.ini by using recovery console, and edit this line

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(X)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000" /fastdetect

change partition(X) to your HPFS/NTF number you got from "fdisk -l /dev/hda" command

Note**
Before you doing this, try to backup your boot.ini first.

Then try to reboot your computer. If everything is still goes wrong please let me know.

OK, problem resolved. Here is what I did:

1. Looked at the partition table in Recovery
Console using the fixpart command. It looked
very strange -- so strange I thought the
partition table might really be corrupted -- but I
did note that it regarded the E: partition, which
is where the W2K system files reside, as
partition 3.

2. Booted into Linux (since I could find no way
to edit the boot.ini file in RC -- I'm sure there is
one, but I couldn't dope it out). Edited the
boot.ini file in vi to read "partition(3)".

3. Booted into Windows -- it worked.

What had had me confused was that the
ORIGINAL boot.ini file on C: had read
"partition(4)". No way, I thought, would the new
number be lower than (4) -- rather, with four
new Linux partitions, it must be the same or
larger. I tried to figure out how Windows was
counting those partitions! But every number I
came up with resulted in the same error.

In the end, the only explanation I could come
up with was that Windows COULD see the
original ext2 partition. (I had previously thought
Windows must be counting the extended
partition but couldn't see the Linux one, so I
thought the Slackware install would not do
anything to the partition table so far as
Windows was concerned, no matter how
many Linux partitions I added.) I thought that
by counting the extended, it got (4): C:,
Extended, , and E:. Now I realize it must
have counted: C:, ext2, , E:. But when I
installed Slackware and used the Reiserfs,
then Windows could see nothing where ext2
had been or thought that that part of the disk
was simply corrupted. So it counted: C:, , E:.

Anyway, mysuse, your answer comes closest
to what I did so you will get the points. I will
leave the question and answer up for a few
days so others can see it -- hope it may help
another dual booter!

Thanks, Reid

This question was closed by the author