Windows Dual Boot Not Working

[newbieDude]

During Mint installation on my laptop, I repartioned hard drive to 28 GB Windows XP partition followed by 28 GB Mint root partition followed by .5 GB swap partition.

After restart, I tried to boot Windows from Grub. It was the last option on the Grub menu. It goes to black terminal screen with "Starting up ..." and promptly hangs - no disk activity - no keyboard input - nothing. I have to power off and power back on.

The NTFS partition is there (mounted as /media/hda1 in Mint) and everything appears to be good on it.

Can anyone please tell me how to get my laptop to boot my Windows XP?

Thanks.

[Boo]

I expect you let the installer resize the windows partition?
bad move

I always change windows partitions using windows system tools.
by using windows to change windows partitions you are sure that windows will know what has happened to the partitions.
I would not be surprised if windows still thinks that its partition is still the same size and can not find the end of the partition.

so you may be able to boot off the live cd and use gparted to delete the linux partitions and then extend the windows partition back to its original size.
but then you will have to use your windows install disk to restore/repair the windows installer to the mbr.
then if windows boots you could resize the windows partition and leave the rest of the disk free.
now reinstall mint to the unused area.

if there is really bad mojo you may have to reinstall windows or try to repair it.
remember to leave half of your disk free to install mint.

sorry for the bad news.

[Husse]

I always change windows partitions using windows system tools

Unfortunately you can't do that for "C", but for all other partitions - yes.
If you want to resize your Windows system partition you can do that from gparted on the live cd, then reboot and whenever you've resized a NTFS partition this way Windows will complain at boot about actual size of the partition not consistent with MFT and start chkdsk. I've done this for all my NTFS partitions, but I've never used the installer to resize NTFS (but ext3 - should be OK)
//Edit/
Should have explained the difference. If you do like that all you do is change a value in the partition table, and you still have NTFS on both sides of that value. So if chkdsk does not accept the change it can easily change back//
Then install...

use your windows install disk to restore/repair the windows installer to the mbr.

fixmbr is the command - but if you don't have a real Windows install disk you can't
But there is a rescue:
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... bcd&t=2188
From the rescue CD mentioned there you should be able to fix this

[Boo]

once again it looks like a one step at a time and a reboot each time to get MS to keep working properly.

the joys of MS.