More of that xp booting problem

[sohummisra]

Well i've read around the net about the problem with booting windows xp because of an autochk program not found problem. the same problem has occured to my hard disk after i installed suse linux 9.1 personal, after having partitioned my hard disk using partition magic 8.0

now, all the solutions that i have found direct me to use the xp bootable cd--which i don't have. all i have is an hp recovery cd that has windows me on it, apart from other progs that would help recovery.

i can access all the data on the windows xp partition by mounting it to /windows/C in suse linux but i cannot boot it. is there anyway to boot xp successfully....a solution that does not require an xp bootable cd? it is possible for me to download required programs and put them onto a floppy/cd but i'm not sure how to make it bootable.

thanks in advance for help. i'm getting really desperate.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

How did you install XP in the first place, without a CD?

 

[Nodsu]

What exactly did you do while partitioning/installing Linux?

What tools do you need on the floppy? Maybe the bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com would help.

 

[sohummisra]

Hi. Sorry that I didn't reply before because I was in school the whole day. About the XP cd, it was in my Dads office and he got it home today. he was out of town and that is why i was desperate for a solution.

Anyway now I have it so I'lll guess I'll follow the instructions in the recovery threads in this forum.

@Nodsu, I used PartitionMagic 8.0 to create an ext3 partition of 4.7 GB (I had about 9.8 GB of free space available). When I set it as active and booted up the Suse cd, yast2 installer directed me to delete hda2 (the linux partition) and create a linux swap partition of 244 mb there instead. And then create a new partition of 4.4 gb for the root partition. This all happened presumably because i had not created a swap partition for linux earlier.

Anyhow, Suse installed without any problems but when i wanted to get back to xp it got stuck in the autochk cycle till i had to boot up linux or shut off the computer from power. i'm hoping that the xp cd will help me reboot xp again.

Laters

 

[sohummisra]

this time a new problem. i boot from the xp cd rom which tells me detecting hardware configuration. the screen then turns black and nothing happens. the cd-rom drive isn't accessed (the lights don't glow) but strangely the cpu's processing light is consistently on (not even flickering).

any ideas?

 

[sohummisra]

aaah it seems that it cannot boot from my cd-rw drive for some reason or another :S

 

[Nodsu]

Did you put the Linux partitions after the Windows partition? If not, then Windows is very confused now. Are there any other Windows accessible partitions besides the system one? If yes, then it is possible thet Windows and it's absolutely awesome feature of drive letters has blown up.

There is no need to make the Linux partition active.

Your ideal setup would be (if there are no more other partitions) in the order on the disk:
A primary partition containing Windows and set active.
An extended partition containing:
A logical Linux Swap partiton.
The Linux system partition.

If you have more than 256MB of RAM then you can get rid of the separate swap partition and let the Linux swap live on the /.

There is also a known bug in newer Linux distros using parted rendering Windows unbootable in dual boot environments. For SuSE: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/fhassel_windows_not_booting91.html

 

[sohummisra]

Hmm maybe I partitioned the Linux partition as a primary partition...I'm not sure. I did put the Linux partition after the Windows (from PM8) but didn't make a swap. YaST2 made that for me...maybe that's where the problems come from.

Anyway, I have decided to completely reformat my HD (i needed to anyway) and start with fresh partitions. Just to make sure, reformatting deletes all data and partitions, right?

After reformatting, I want to have the following partitions:

Windows XP, Suse Linux 9.1, Linux Swap, Data Files

Can anyone suggest an efficient order and types of partition for me to use to prevent HD problems in the future? And also, I can reformat from the XP installation CD, right?

 

[nedwob]

Xp booting problem

I have had problems with the 'Autochk program not found' and I have found some reasons for it, and solutions. Go to my web site www.showman.org.uk go to the 'Computer Topics' page and you can read what I have found - too long to quote here.