> To the best of my knowledge, the windows bootloader is on hd0,0 > (the windows mbr simply boots the first primary partition with the > boot flag set, usually hd0,0)
Couldn't he change the active partition with fdisk ?
It wouldnt fix the problem. The windows bootloader is installed to the windows partition. The windows MBR essentially does the same as the 'chainloader' grub option, and passes control onto another bootloader, located on the first active partition.
Unfortunately the bootloader on the windows partition was overwritten with grub.
Sorry if i was unclear before, i should have probably made more of a note between what i described as the "windows bootloader" and the "windows mbr", as in the *nix world they are often the same thing.
> Whether he was to reinstall grup properly or not, this leaves an > unbootable windows partition. Usually windows isnt kept around > purely for bragging rights, so he probably wants to fix it ;)
Hmm, i'm not an NT/XP expert, but I had a similar situation with a '98 box where lilo blasted away the windows partition, fdisk /mbr fixed it no problem.
that would work on a dos boot disc, but I'm not sure what the windows recovery console's fdisk abilities are, if it even has fdisk.
I'd look it up on a recovery cd myself if (a) i wasnt so lazy, and (b) my laptop came with something other than a restore cd.
Shouldn't he be able to start with a bootdisk configure grub with (hd0) and add XP to the list of O/S's to boot ?
Or do you also need the boot code sitting on /dev/hda2 to load windoze ?
exactly. technically it isnt a grub problem, although grub was the initial cause.
> > (AFAIK you can't install XP on any partition higher than 0 anyway) > > you can with any of the NT-based windows versions, iirc, and at the > very least with xp.
Hrm, well I don't know why after installing linux on a friends laptop
and then trying to install XP to /dev/hda3 an error popped up saying
something to the effect of "Windows must be installed on first
partition of disk" fortunatly it was just a debian/knopix install and he just wanted linux for curiousity's sake ;-) me being enthuiastic and thinking microsoft wouldn't complain about not having their O/S first on the disk, just slapped linux /dev/hda1 swap /dev/hda2 xp /
dev/hda3 grr.
From an XP pro install I had done at work, i seem to remember it asking me how i wanted [it to mangle] the partitions, and gave me the ability to install it to a second partition.
Also, theres people out there that boot multiple versions of windows from the same disk (as if one isnt too many), so I would assume that windows is capable of being partitions other than the first, although i will still make the conclusion that:
- must be a primary partition
- must be nt based windows, and not 9x
Cheers,
--
Chris I
If you want to read about love and marriage you've got to buy two separate
books.
-- Alan King
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