On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:45:59 -0500 Charles Blair <c-bl...@illinois.edu> wrote:
> I tried to set up a dual boot of windows and linux from > the installer. The linux part works, but windows 7 starts to boot > and then takes me back to grub. > > I am sufficiently happy with linux that I was planning to get > rid of windows. I would like to use the space to give openBSD a > try. > > As a first step, I tried using cfdisk -Ps /dev/sda, and got the > ominous warning: > > FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends in the final > partial cylinder > > Since linux is working, I'm worried that trying to fix whatever > this problem is might wreck my system. Possibly. Windows is extremely fussy, even as far back as NT4 it could not be moved on a hard drive once installed. What did you use to shrink the original Windows partition, which I assume ran all the way up to sda3? It would appear that this software was to blame for the issue. > > fdisk -l /dev/sda gives: > > Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes > 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders > Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes > Disk identifier: 0xbb0c5abb > > Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System > /dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown > /dev/sda2 192 12349 97656250 7 HPFS/NTFS > /dev/sda3 37264 38914 13248512 17 Hidden > HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4 12350 37264 200128513 5 > Extended /dev/sda5 * 12350 12392 340992 83 Linux This one might be the issue. Before Vista, Windows absolutely required its boot partition to be marked bootable. I don't know if that is true now, as I haven't done any multi-boot work since XP. But Linux does not use the bootable flag, so there's no harm in moving it to sda2 to try. There's a (I hope) minor point that sda3 and sda4 share a block, which may not cause trouble, but may prevent the hidden partition (presumably a recovery image for Windows) from working. I would hope you made an image backup of that partition first, as there aren't many W7 installation discs around. > /dev/sda6 12392 13486 8787968 83 Linux > /dev/sda7 13486 13851 2928640 83 Linux > /dev/sda8 13851 14826 7827456 82 Linux swap / > Solaris /dev/sda9 14826 14874 389120 83 Linux > /dev/sda10 14874 37264 179849216 83 Linux > > Partition table entries are not in disk order This never used to be an issue, except for at least one early Windows partition utility. I've no idea what software now might have problems with it. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110720200910.1159d...@jresid.jretrading.com
