I'd nuke that FAT partition you created and just access your Windows with
VFAT (mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows would be a good example of how to
do it.) VFAT is "Fat32."
At this point, I'd say, nuke that partition, and try to boot back into Linux
and see if it works right. If not, I'd say your Linux install is hosed and
probably time to reinstall. Also, if you CAN get back in, but only to a
console prompt, there is a way to get it to auto-boot back to the X-windows
login screen, but that's a topic for when you've gotten your Linux system
back up and running correctly. :-)
John
----- Original Message -----
From: Will <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, August 14, 1999 9:50 PM
Subject: [newbie] some questions regarding booting and win partitions
> all I wanted to do was access my windows partition from linux and I've
> created tons of errors. I was reading up on it and someone it said that
> there is no support for FAT32 in linux, only FAT. this was ok, I'd just
> set up a 2gig FAT partition to be an intermediate partition, right? I
> created the partition and then when I tried to boot into linux BAM
> error. It said VHS panic root partition \dev\hda5 found hda1 ... <hda5
> hda6 hda7> and locked up. ok I thought this might happen because it
> would shift the partitions up. I then figured out from the boot disk I
> created when making mandrake I could type linux boot=/dev/hda6 ro (ok
> maybe some faqs helped out :) ). so this got me back into linux I
> thought I could just mount my hda5 partition, start emulating windoze
> apps, and all would be well. well that wasn't the case. I got into linux
> but I wasn't greeted by that nice gradiant screen with KDE or gnome
> selection, only that ASCII penguin and the bash prompt. I logged in and
> remembered that "startx" was used to get into KDE. welp I went into KDE
> as root and tried to mount my hda5. I used that exploring thing, went
> into the /dev directory and clicked on hda5. now KDE locked up. great. I
> used ctrl+alt+backspace to kill it. now I was back at the prompt. I
> typed mount /dev/hda5 but it didn't find it in etc/bin and some other
> dir even though I was in /. could anything else possible go wrong? yup.
> I thought GNOME might give me more luck in getting into my windows
> partition, but since that gradiant screen went away after I created my
> windows FAT partition I didn't know how to start it. I went into the
> gnome directory and found a readme. I was under the impression VI was
> like edit in DOS. ok I typed VI readme. It displayed ~'s down the
> screen, and locked up my keyboard! I pressed escape q! because I read
> somewhere that q! closes it but that didn't work. I couldn't do anything
> so I pressed ctrl+alt+del. this began to restart my comp, but then it
> couldn't unmount the root partition! well I just booted back to windows
> to write this message and I have a feeling my that linux partition's
> file system has been damaged. alright now I have a few questions.
> 1) how do I get that gradiant login screen when I boot up back so I can
> select gnome?
> 2) how do I access my windows FAT partition (hda5) I created to be the
> intermediate partition between my FAT32 partition and linux? mount
> doesn't work.
> 3) I very much hate booting linux from a floppy, how do I get loadlin to
> work? I created a dir called linux with loadlin, vmlinuz,
> initsomething.gz and a bat with loadlin c:\linux\loadlin
> c:\linux\vmlinuz root=/dev/hda6/ ro in it, rebooted into DOS mode from
> win, and ran the bat. well I got some weird error.
>
> do you guys recommend I reinstall linux? I just have the fresh installed
> mandrake on my linux partition. well reinstalling would let me create a
> bootdisk that has /dev/hda6 as root on it, and fix q 1, but I still need
> to figure out how to access my windows FAT partition and get loadlin to
> work.
> I really hope all this trouble I'm going through to get linux set up
> pays off in linux being worth it. I haven't really been able to play
> around since I'm getting so many dang errors and problems..
> well, as always, thanks in advance for any help and info.
>
