Grub Loader Dual Boot Error-no such device for WinXP[SOLVED]

[JC-TX]

I am looking for it again, not so easy to find what data do you want?

[JC-TX]

found it what datat do you want I assume the listing in the bottom part of ghex

[spandey]

use arrow keys to move around. At the bottom of the screen there are boxes. below those boxes Offset will keep changing

[JC-TX]

I found it what data do you want?

[spandey]

at Offset 1C what values are those "FF" or "00" or "3F"

[JC-TX]

Oddly I decided to shut the system down due much revving taking place in my machine when i connect over the network there are no oo ff

[JC-TX]

Revving has stopped are you there?

[spandey]

anyway you will have to open the file. It should not take anytime. I will repeat the steps when you have time you can do it.

Here are the steps:
1. Copy Boot sector of NTFS partition i.e. sda4 to a file
dd if=/dev/sda4 bs=1 count=512 of=/home/boot4

2. make a copy of file boot4 to boot4.backup

3. change the values in hex loccation 1C to point to NTFS partition
a. use GHEX to open file part04.
b. at hex location 1C type 9S 1B 1C 1F. (actual sector number is 521935785. In hex it will be 1f1c11b9s. In reverse it is 9s1b1c1f)
4. save the file
5. copy part04 to NTFS boot sector.
dd if=/home/boot4 bs=1 count=512 of=/dev/sda4

6. Do the changes to grub as mentioned earlier

open your grub.cfg with a text editor:

Code: Select all
gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg


change the windows entry like this:

Code: Select all
menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda4)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}

7. make a copy of the boot.ini file as boot.back
Change the original boot.ini file

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="XP Professional" /SAFEBOOT /fastdetect

8. shutdown the PC
9. Power on
10. From Grub select Windows
11. Windows will boot into safe mode
12. While booting to safe mode don't select recovery just boot it
13. use Regedit and find
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
In the right of this will have bunch of partition references. Delete all of them.
exit Regedit by saving changes

14. copy Boot.ini to boot.bak2
15 delele boot.ini
16 rename boot.back to boot.ini (the file from step 7 earlier)
17. restart the PC. Boot windows from Grub. It should be good to go.

[JC-TX]

WOW that's a lot of work and looks VERY high tech to me. I'm sorry but I thought you disappeared, I was taking a screen shot so you could see what I had. Perhaps tomorrow after some sleep (have not slept for 2 nights now) maybe you would be around I don't think I can go that alone, but maybe. Would it be faster to just reload windows/programs/mint?

[spandey]

Hi,
I am in India so for me night is long way. I just thought about it all over again. There is a shorter method. We will have to remove mint. Fix XP and then put Mint back again. If thats OK then I need few inputs from you.
1. Is it a PC or Laptop
2. How many hard drives are internal and external?
3. Did you install Mint with Live CD?
4. Did you partition the Drive by yourself (I mean you are ok with partitining using Gparted)
5. Post the screen shot of the GHEX of that part04 file

All the best.

[Leppie]

I found this on UBUNTU forum, it sounds like what you are telling me to do and it says it is a fix for a cloned Windows partition.
This is a solution for fixing a cloned&moved ntfs partition, mystery solved, i hope it helps!

this is what i told you last night. if you had modified the grub entry you would've been able to boot windows, from where you could've used windows tools to repair the partition's table.
however if you still are not able to access the windows partition, you could try testdisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install testdisk
sudo testdisk

testdisk can rebuild partition tables without touching the partition's data.

[JC-TX]

I haven't done anything yet but run a couple data utilities, I did try to change the boot.ini to point at part4 but it still wouldn't boot. I believe that the data on the partition is named as my old hd and grub can not boot it and I have one idea that I want to run by ya'll. What if from live cd/gparted I made changes to the partition wouldn't that cause windows to rewrite the boot data on the partition, then re-install mint? Thanks again for all the help, Janice

My answers below

Postby spandey on Wed Feb 24, 2010 3:38 am
Hi,
I am in India so for me night is long way. I just thought about it all over again. There is a shorter method. We will have to remove mint. Fix XP and then put Mint back again. If thats OK then I need few inputs from you. Funny i woke up this morning thinking the exact same thing, Mint is no big deal to re-install Windows would be a pain if I had to re-install due to the service packs/software
1. Is it a PC or Laptop Laptop
2. How many hard drives are internal and external? (1) internal) (2) external
3. Did you install Mint with Live CD? yes
4. Did you partition the Drive by yourself (I mean you are ok with partitining using Gparted) yes
5. Post the screen shot of the GHEX of that part04 file



* Report this post
* Reply with quote

Re: Grub Loader Dual Boot Error-no such device for WinXP

Postby Leppie on Wed Feb 24, 2010 4:49 am

JC-TX wrote:I found this on UBUNTU forum, it sounds like what you are telling me to do and it says it is a fix for a cloned Windows partition.
This is a solution for fixing a cloned&moved ntfs partition, mystery solved, i hope it helps!

this is what i told you last night. if you had modified the grub entry you would've been able to boot windows, from where you could've used windows tools to repair the partition's table.
however if you still are not able to access the windows partition, you could try testdisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install testdisk
sudo testdisk


testdisk can rebuild partition tables without touching the partition's data.this is what i told you last night. if you had modified the grub entry you would've been able to boot windows, from where you could've used windows tools to repair the partition's table.
however if you still are not able to access the windows partition, you could try testdisk: http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

This seems like a very good idea! I could not figure out how to get in to DOS to run fdisk I have to reprogram my mind to thinking it doesn't matter if neither will boot because of the LiveCD, they are great sure that is what the C-Geek used years ago to pull data from a spent HD and charge me over $400 (good for him to have known Linux back then) and It was worth it to me not to loose my data.

[Leppie]

I haven't done anything yet but run a couple data utilities, I did try to change the boot.ini to point at part4 but it still wouldn't boot. I believe that the data on the partition is named as my old hd and grub can not boot it and I have one idea that I want to run by ya'll. What if from live cd/gparted I made changes to the partition wouldn't that cause windows to rewrite the boot data on the partition, then re-install mint?

NTFS is a windows native filesystem. no matter how good the current ntfs support is in linux, it cannot beat the tools in windows which are specifically made to do just that. linux tools cannot beat windows tools on repairing ntfs errors.

I could not figure out how to get in to DOS to run fdisk

i provided simple instructions for 2 methods in this post:

I can't boot in to windows, so I don't now how to run fdisk if I can't get in to Windows?

the easiest and safest way is actually issuing these commands from Mint:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

never mind the warning/message that might appear when installing lilo, just continue


however, on second thought you may actually be able to boot windows without removing grub2.
open your grub.cfg with a text editor:

Code: Select all

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

change the windows entry like this:

Code: Select all

menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda4)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}

save and exit the file. DO NOT RUN UPDATE-GRUB as this will annul your modifications.
...

[JC-TX]

Code: Select all
menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda4)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}
Tried this yesterday; can't save it Linux says it is a read only file

[Leppie]

Code: Select all
menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda4)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}
Tried this yesterday; can't save it Linux says it is a read only file

did you open it like i suggested?

Code: Select all

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[JC-TX]

anyway you will have to open the file. It should not take anytime. I will repeat the steps when you have time you can do it.

Here are the steps:
1. Copy Boot sector of NTFS partition i.e. sda4 to a file
dd if=/dev/sda4 bs=1 count=512 of=/home/boot4

2. make a copy of file boot4 to boot4.backup

3. change the values in hex loccation 1C to point to NTFS partition
a. use GHEX to open file part04.
b. at hex location 1C type 9S 1B 1C 1F. (actual sector number is 521935785. In hex it will be 1f1c11b9s. In reverse it is 9s1b1c1f)
4. save the file
5. copy part04 to NTFS boot sector.
dd if=/home/boot4 bs=1 count=512 of=/dev/sda4

6. Do the changes to grub as mentioned earlier

open your grub.cfg with a text editor:

Code: Select all
gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg


change the windows entry like this:

Code: Select all
menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda4)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}

7. make a copy of the boot.ini file as boot.back
Change the original boot.ini file

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="XP Professional" /SAFEBOOT /fastdetect

8. shutdown the PC
9. Power on
10. From Grub select Windows
11. Windows will boot into safe mode
12. While booting to safe mode don't select recovery just boot it
13. use Regedit and find
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
In the right of this will have bunch of partition references. Delete all of them.
exit Regedit by saving changes

14. copy Boot.ini to boot.bak2
15 delele boot.ini
16 rename boot.back to boot.ini (the file from step 7 earlier)
17. restart the PC. Boot windows from Grub. It should be good to go.

OK Spandey attached is the screen shot there are different selection at the bottom to select and show data in different formats (show endian decoding or show unasigned and float as hexadecimal) not sure which ones you want selected this is a screen shot of the default

[JC-TX]

Code: Select all
menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda4)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,4)
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}
Tried this yesterday; can't save it Linux says it is a read only file

did you open it like i suggested?

Code: Select all

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Yes

[Leppie]

Yes

then use this method:

Code: Select all

sudo chmod a+w /boot/grub/grub.cfg
sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

after you've finished editing set the file to read only again like this:

Code: Select all

sudo chmod a-w /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[JC-TX]

Hey spandey, not sure what happened but I am here waiting are you still online?

[spandey]

Yes I am here..