menu.lst

[mugs]

Hi, I have a laptop with WinXP, it had 2 partitions, C and D. I resized D and formatted it as ext3 and then installed Daryna 021. I can boot into Mint fine, but I cant get back into windows. I am pretty sure it is all still there...if someone could tell me what my menu.lst needs to look like. Out of the box, it had a Dell Utility partion, but that wont boot. It has it as hd0,0 and mint is hd0,3. I have tried 0 and 2 for win, but it tells me either the device doesnt exist, the file system is unknown...

Please let me know what info you need from me about my partitions, etc.

Thank you very much.

PS this is a work laptop, so I really need to be able to boot into Win, unfortunately.

[Lolo Uila]

If the Dell recovery partition is the first partition (hd0,0), then your Windows boot partition is probably (hd0,1).

If I'm reading your description right, I see:

hd0,0 = Dell recovery partition
hd0,1 = Windows boot (C: drive)
hd0,2 = Windows data (D: drive)
hd0,3 = Linux

So your Windows entry should look something like this:

title Windows XP
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Aloha, Tim

[mugs]

Thanks for your reply. I did try that, and it didnt work. I will have to wait until the morning when I am back at work, I will try that and post the errors.

[mugs]

Here is what I get for fdisk:
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8a6a8a6a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 14 112423+ 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 * 15 4872 39021885 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 4873 9184 34636140 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 9185 9729 4377712+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 4873 6541 13406211 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 6542 9152 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 9153 9184 257008+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
papa@hidden:~$

any suggestions of what to try would be great, thanks.

[mugs]

some more info: when I try to boot with the following scenarios, this is what happens:

root(hd0,1)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
SavedDefault
MakeActive
Chainloader+1
Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format
*********************

root(hd0,0)
File system is fat, partition type 0x6
saveddefault
makeactive
chainloader+1
...just freezes with the above on screen, no error message
*************************
root(hd0,2) (or root(hd0,4)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xf
saveddefault
makeactive
Error12: Invalid Device requested


thanks

[Lolo Uila]

Which root device is the bootable Linux partition?

[mugs]

/dev/sda4 (hd0,3). thanks

[Lolo Uila]

That's really odd... hd0,1 should be Windows.

I really don't know what to suggest here, other than reinstalling grub. I wonder if Dell was running some kind of funky BIOS overlay or proprietary boot manager in their boot sector? Dell does some really odd stuff sometimes.

If you want to post your menu.lst file I'll take a look at it.

Aloha, Tim

[merlwiz79]

What Happens if you try this for you menu.lst.

Code: Select all

title      Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root      (hd0,1)
savedefault
map      (hd0) (hd0,1)
map      (hd0,1) (hd0)
chainloader   +1

[mugs]

Thanks guys. I asked them at work to reimage the machine, so I could start over, and they said they would give me a new machine. It will probably be a Dell D620. I really like Mint, but I always seem to have trouble when I install/partiton. I have used Linux (Fedora, RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc for over 5 years. When I get the new machine I would like to try again, so suggestions would be helfpul. The other thing is when I booted the Live Cd, and ran gparted, it saw my windows partitions, but it said that the file system was unrecognized. I thought maybe there was something weird about the drive. I tried it in a nother XP machine at work (not a laptop) and it saw all the partitions fine.

Anyway, I hope to get the new machine in a few days...

Thanks.