Newbie can't access or boot to NTFS partitions

[Clifton]

Hello Linux Mint forumites, taken the plunge into Linux after many years of Windows loyalty (and Linux curiousity) and am now finding it very interesting, but I do believe that during my Live CD installation on Daryna 4.0 (which I really should have read the instructions about before attempting), I may very well have inadvertently deleted one of my Windows partitions (previously I had a dual boot of an XP partition for music programs and Vista for the rest) in the process.

Mercifully, my XP partition still seems to be somewhere on the hard disk (according to GParted), but the GRUB bootloader can't see XP on startup, and Daryna can't see the XP (NTFS) partition in the 'Computer' section.

Screen of what GParted tells me shown thusly:
http://files.mint-space.com/getfile,20080215174810,Screenshot--dev-sda%20-%20GParted.png.html

Thus, my poorly-articulated question is, why can't Linux Mint access/see/boot to my XP partition?

[Husse]

Relax - if you see the partition in Gparted it's there
But something has happened....
Look into your /boot/grub/menu.lst.
It should have an entry like this

Code: Select all

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title      Microsoft Windows XP
root      (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader   +1

If not edit menu.lst to include this, and it's adjusted to XP in sda1

[Clifton]

Hey thanks for that one, GRUB now certainly sees XP on startup but when I start XP I get the 'BOOTMGR cannot be found' screen of death. I've been tinkering with Super Grub Disk trying to even get XP to boot, but no matter what i do I get that message or an 'Error operating system cannot be found' or somesuch.

Strangely though, Mint now can mount my NTFS drive, so now I'm certain all my files are there, it's just XP refuses to boot. Any help?