re: NTLDR missing on dual-boot system
Sunday, February 6, 2005 at 3:29 pm
Windows 2000 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Steve Dunn
(572 messages posted)
Capn,
I never noticed your original link to your drive image - so didn't realise how complicated
you'd already got (all those logical drives in the extended partition)
To answer your last question - I'd start again! What's that small hidden primary
ntfs partition at the beginning of the drive?
I have a problem giving any advice as I NEVER use extended partitions for dual/multi-booting.
2 reasons - I've had a number of 'lost' logical drives in the past for no good reason,
and operating systems generally need a primary partition to boot from - so if you
have one (or more) installed in an extended partition, it still needs a boot sector
elsewhere (I'm not entirely sure if this is true of linux - basically got fed up
installing various versions of it, as it never works properly - it may be directly
bootable using lilo/grub even if installed in extended partition).
Also, although PM is a very good tool, you can come a cropper with too many resizes/deletes/etc
- you definitely need to back up vital data - I hope the whole 28GB on that last
partition isn't vital, unless you have another hard drive to back it up to - before
you embark on your restructuring exercise.
Are you intending installing XP instead of 2k?
In order to arrive at a dual boot XP/mandrake machine this is what I'd do:-
1. Back up what data you want/need to keep (to another drive, DVDs, tape whatever).
2. Wipe the drive - remove all partitions from it.
3. Install XP - creating one primary partition using its partitioning tools during
the install process. Leaving enough room for linux and any other partitions you may
want.
4. Install mandrake - its boot loader should give you the option to create dual boot,
and its partitioning tools should let you set it up easily.
5. When you're happy both o/s boot ok, create any more partitions you might want
(if any).
I'm sorry this doesn't actually answer your question - but I wouldn't attempt to
restructure your filestore if its was on my machine (unless there was no data that
mattered and I was just experimenting to see what worked and what didn't)
On Saturday, February 5, 2005 at 2:34 am, capnfutile wrote:
>Okay, I'm back up and running computer-wise. Thanks for the help - the Steves were
>on the right track. I copied the NT files from the CD after booting with a win98
>boot floppy (glad I didn't toss that!) as I couldn't write to the disk using the
>recovery console. I edited a new boot.ini file and rebooted. I got the error "Windows
>2k could not start beacuse the following file is missing or currupt
>rott>\system32\ntoskernel.exe". I reasoned that this was because my win2k partition
>is not my second partition - refer to this screenshot of my hard drive:
>http://img209.exs.cx/img209/304/screenshot1lc.jpg
>
>I just kept adding one to the partition number, saving and rebooting and when I
got
>to six we were good as gold - I didn't need to run fixboot again.
>
>Okay, now to tempt fate: Next I'd like to do the following:
>
>1: remove current linux partitions and the fat32 data partition
>2: resize C: (where I've just re-written the boot.ini) to a minimal size.
>3: install XP without farking any of the data in the NTFS data partition
(the
>final and largest partition)
>4: install mandrake and dual boot.
>
>What's the best order to do this in?
>
>Thanks for your help guys - Steves, if I could email you a cold frosty beer, I would!
>
>Capn
>
>
>
>
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