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#1
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partitions got messed up.
I have two fat32 partitions and a ext3 partition 0x83 anyway. I had
that. I formatted my fat32 the bootable one and reinstalled xp x64. Well an ext partition was created I have one fat32 partition with ntldr ntdetect.com and boot.ini. And another partition is the main one with everything else on it. What the heck. And there's 7-8 MB unallocated space between all these new partitions. Can I get ntldr and ntdect.com and boot.ini all onto one fat32 partition? The pagefile.sys in one the main system drive. Xp is calling the other fat32 partition the boot partition. I want boot and system on one partition. Whew. Bill |
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#2
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partitions got messed up.
Bill Cunningham wrote:
I have two fat32 partitions and a ext3 partition 0x83 anyway. I had that. I formatted my fat32 the bootable one and reinstalled xp x64. Well an ext partition was created I have one fat32 partition with ntldr ntdetect.com and boot.ini. And another partition is the main one with everything else on it. What the heck. And there's 7-8 MB unallocated space between all these new partitions. Can I get ntldr and ntdect.com and boot.ini all onto one fat32 partition? The pagefile.sys in one the main system drive. Xp is calling the other fat32 partition the boot partition. I want boot and system on one partition. Whew. Bill I've run into this with Win2K. I had a setup with Win2K on it, and decided to install a second copy. What happened was, Win2K created an Extended Partition and put a Logical Partition inside it (which should not be boot-able). The second copy of Windows, relies on the first copy of Windows for the boot.ini and other associated boot files. So the first copy of Windows "runs the show", and when in the boot menu, if you select the second copy, the second copy finishes booting. In such a setup, you dare not delete the first copy of Windows! And this means, the second copy doesn't need a complete set of files. It can be missing boot files, because it depends on the first copy to boot. As you say "What the heck". I'm guessing your setup looks roughly like this (for anyone else playing along at home). In my diagram here, I just assumed the first WinXP was in the first partition. That's why I assigned it the Active flag. If the Linux is controlling the booting right now, and chain loading WinXP (first copy), I suppose it's possible for the second copy to come up. I'm surprised the second install doesn't reload the MBR with Windows boot code (blowing away GRUB). +-----+----------+---------+------------------+------------------------------------+ | MBR | FAT32 | FAT32 | EXT3 0x83 | Extended envelope (primary entry) | | | Primary | Primary | (Linux) Primary +-------------------------+-- ... ---+ | | (Active) | | | Logical | | | | | | | (Second copy of WinXP) | | +-----+----------+---------+------------------+-------------------------+----------+ What you do next, really depends on what you were trying to do in the first place. I would: 0) Back up this hard drive before it is too late! then 1) Boot my Linux LiveCD. 2) Use GParted. Delete Extended envelope. Now back to three partitions. New WinXP is effectively erased. Create new FAT32 or NTFS primary, located at the end of the disk, in place of the Extended. That should occupy the fourth primary partition slot. 3) sudo fdisk /dev/sd... turn off active on first partition. make fourth partition active. change partition type field of first partition (original WinXP) to 0x00 (first partition is now hidden.) You must be very careful when doing this - the first partition "looks empty", And lots of tools will jump at the chance to overwrite all the fields in that first entry. 4) Boot installer CD. Install WinXP (second copy). Specify location for installation (fourth partition). Since the installer cannot see the first copy of WinXP, it won't try any tricks. The MBR gets boot code. GRUB is disabled. Linux is an orphan. 5) After WinXP install finished, go back to using the Linux FDISK from your LiveCD (Linux onboard won't run), change first partition type field from 0x00 to 0x0C or 0x07 or whatever it was in the first place. This procedure makes the WinXP in the fourth partition, a complete installation. The active (boot flag) is set. There is no boot menu, because the new OS doesn't know about the old OS. The old OS now looks like a data partition in a way. The pagefile can be seen, but that's not a problem. Since the OS in the fourth partition was booted, before the first partition was turned back on, the presence of a pagefile.sys won't cause a problem. ******* And in case you say something like "I can't follow this", you're the individual who thought it would be cool to triple boot. ******* I don't do this stuff myself. It's "one OS, one hard drive" here in my shack. All OSes are independent of one another. I unplug drives I don't want. No other drive is affected when I unplug a drive. All drives are perfectly fine if booted on the PC all by themselves. I don't have a problem *simulating* triple boot setups inside a VM, because "nobody gets hurt" if a VM is trashed. I've had enough "accidents" here with real data and setups, to not want to risk it with my primary setup. To give a recent example of a bad outcome, I was multiplexing OSes on my test machine. Came time to install Ubuntu, was in a rush to get the show on the road. The prompt said "will replace your existing Ubuntu install". Fine I said to myself, it'll overwrite the existing Linux slash partition. Pushed the button, and it erased the entire disk! Including my large partition with the backup copies of all the other OSes being multiplexed in, as well as an original copy of my laptop backup. Grrr. You can never be too careful, when a disk has stuff on it you should not be risking... Ubuntu is now on my "treat it like Debian" list. No more OS multiplexing on that disk, the OS is now fixed at Win7. That won't bring back the lost backups. I'd have run TestDisk, but the important stuff was already overwritten. ******* I hope you make backups of your setups, before doing dangerous stuff. If you'd made a backup, you could just have restored and nobody would need to know what happened :-) Paul |
#3
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partitions got messed up.
"Paul" wrote in message ... [snip] I hope you make backups of your setups, before doing dangerous stuff. If you'd made a backup, you could just have restored and nobody would need to know what happened :-) I backup onto a USB stick before doing anything like this. My 1st partition was 0x0c and 2nd 0xc the XP installation was in the 1st partition. The 2nd fat32 was for any thing I might like to put in there or copy there for a time. The 3rd partition was 0x83 linux primary. Is there a way to copy the files from the boot partition ntldr, ntdect.com and boot.ini to the main system XP partition and boot it? Or is that just too simple for MS to allow? Bill |
#4
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partitions got messed up.
Bill Cunningham wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ... [snip] I hope you make backups of your setups, before doing dangerous stuff. If you'd made a backup, you could just have restored and nobody would need to know what happened :-) I backup onto a USB stick before doing anything like this. My 1st partition was 0x0c and 2nd 0xc the XP installation was in the 1st partition. The 2nd fat32 was for any thing I might like to put in there or copy there for a time. The 3rd partition was 0x83 linux primary. Is there a way to copy the files from the boot partition ntldr, ntdect.com and boot.ini to the main system XP partition and boot it? Or is that just too simple for MS to allow? Bill So you're attempting to make the newest partition viable, at the expense of anything else ? Yes, you can copy files. (Make sure you do the copying, from an environment where you can actually see all the files. You don't want to miss any.) Now, what's in the files. For example, are the *references* inside boot.ini correct ? You'll want to keep one of the clumps of text in there, because it corresponds to your newest install. Maybe you don't have to do something about that right away. There are two boot sectors. The first thing that helps the boot process is in the MBR. You use "fixmbr" to reload that. It all depends on what is currently doing the bootstrapping at the moment, as to whether fixmbr needs to be used or not. And it's not in the installed Windows OS - it's in the recovery console of the installer CD. So if you boot the installer CD, and don't install, the other option gets you to the recovery console. You can run fixmbr from there. The second boot sector is in the C: partition itself, up in the file system header area. It is repaired/replaced with "fixboot" command. I don't know whether that weird install process actually loads a boot sector. You copy over the missing files needed to boot. Oh, I thought of another detail. You need to change this. +-----+----------+---------+------------------+------------------------------------+ | MBR | FAT32 | FAT32 | EXT3 0x83 | Extended envelope (primary entry) | | | Primary | Primary | (Linux) Primary +-------------------------+-- ... ---+ | | (Active) | | | Logical | | | | | | | (Second copy of WinXP) | | +-----+----------+---------+------------------+-------------------------+----------+ to this... +-----+----------+---------+------------------+------------------------------------+ | MBR | FAT32 | FAT32 | EXT3 0x83 | Primary | | | Primary | Primary | (Linux) Primary | (Second copy of WinXP) | | | | | | (Active) | | | | | | | +-----+----------+---------+------------------+------------------------------------+ That requires a partition manager that knows how to do that. The extended envelope occupies a couple of sectors, a small space. The logical partition will likely get moved a short distance to the left (which could take a while). The reason you have to do that, is if you move the boot files back to the partition on the right hand end, it's a logical and cannot boot by itself. There is a need to get the active boot flag to point at the partition to be booted, and the active flag cannot be associated with the logical partition. But converting it back to a primary, the active flag then makes sense. So you make it a primary first, then set it active. If it still won't boot, you can apply the fixboot to the right-most one again, from the recovery console. And that should be enough to make a single OS run on your disk. I don't think I have a partition manager here right now, that would do such a transform. (I'd have to check GParted to see if it can do that.) The Linux is an orphan. It could be repaired. There is presumably a way to re-install grub. I don't know if it needs a chroot environment, or what it takes to do the job. The most I've done with grub is update-grub. Nothing more than that. I heard the other day, there is a "super-grub livecd", which apparently contains a way to boot that orphan OS partition. Assuming that's what is in the 0x83. At one time, I had a Linux install here, where grub was on a floppy. I would boot the floppy, and it would pass control off to the hard drive. So that Linux partition, had no impact on anything else on the computer. Because the boot aspect was contained on a floppy. It's possible that was grub rather than grub2. Paul |
#5
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partitions got messed up.
On 12/17/2014 07:54 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote:
I have two fat32 partitions and a ext3 partition 0x83 anyway. I had that. I formatted my fat32 the bootable one and reinstalled xp x64. Well an ext partition was created I have one fat32 partition with ntldr ntdetect.com and boot.ini. And another partition is the main one with everything else on it. What the heck. And there's 7-8 MB unallocated space between all these new partitions. Can I get ntldr and ntdect.com and boot.ini all onto one fat32 partition? The pagefile.sys in one the main system drive. Xp is calling the other fat32 partition the boot partition. I want boot and system on one partition. Whew. Bill If you performed a default install of Win7 on a new drive, there would have been a small (100 meg) boot partition. Since you already had the drive divided up prior to your installation, Windows simply follows the same rules that is has always followed since at least Win95: Windows can be installed on any drive you want...but the C: drive (which must be an active primary partition must always contain your necessary "boot" files. So, ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini must remain on your C: drive. If all is working I would not worry about it...but personally I would not use fat32. For it's fault tolerance capabilities I'd never consider not using NTFS As to the tiny amount of unallocated space...I would totally leave it alone. It's way too small to worry about and I have an odd feeling that if you tried to reclaim it something would get damaged in the process. |
#6
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partitions got messed up.
"philo " wrote in message ... If all is working I would not worry about it...but personally I would not use fat32. For it's fault tolerance capabilities I'd never consider not using NTFS I've seen a lot of hacks for NTFS and some maybe worth using. I don't "dislike" NTFS as much as I like simple fat32. No journals, extents and so on that's in NTFS. As to the tiny amount of unallocated space...I would totally leave it alone. It's way too small to worry about and I have an odd feeling that if you tried to reclaim it something would get damaged in the process. Bill Yeah I've read that windows and I know XP for sure. Needs that. It is "marked" unallocated but who knows. In this situation. Now if a save my data and zero out the mbr and repartition a new drive, I can split it and there;s no unallocated space. Why do I do this? Well from time to time adware, malware, and who knows what all gets in there and I just erase all and re-install clean. Beats those virus cleaners and such. |
#7
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partitions got messed up.
It's fedora's grub2 I have no problem with it. It's in the MBR right before the partition table. I have an mbr with grub and one without. And yes there is a way to reinstall grub2 from the linux boot disk. You are right about the LBA parition being inside a ext'd partition. So you think I should make the linux partition active? That I haven't tried. What do you have in mind? Bill |
#8
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partitions got messed up.
Bill Cunningham wrote:
It's fedora's grub2 I have no problem with it. It's in the MBR right before the partition table. I have an mbr with grub and one without. And yes there is a way to reinstall grub2 from the linux boot disk. You are right about the LBA parition being inside a ext'd partition. So you think I should make the linux partition active? That I haven't tried. What do you have in mind? Bill Linux doesn't have an active partition. The Linux MBR doesn't check for an active partition. The active flag is considered by a Windows-loaded MBR. Installing grub would re-load the MBR, and eventually boot some grub.cfg with UUID partition addressing. That's how Linux finds the partitions. As far as I know, the partitions can even be located on other disks, so a disk1 grub, could access a disk2 slash partition. If you install grub, after installing Windows, grub can manage the boot process. It "chain loads" Windows. The question then is, whether a Windows partition could be in a logical and still be handed control. My guess is no, and proper maintenance of your new Windows install will be needed, to make it no longer depend on the original WinXP install. grub --- chain_load --- pass control original to new windows windows install With grub installed, then if you delete the original windows in the primary partition, the new windows in the logical partition is an orphan. grub --- ??? --- pass control to new windows install If you make the fourth partition with the new install, into a self-sufficient OS, then chain loading directly to it would work. You'd install grub, after fixing up that fourth partition. At a minimum, you'd have to put some boot files in it (all the invisible files seen on the first WinXP install, that are missing on the second WinXP install. grub ------------------- boot to new windows install Personally, I would fix that fourth partition, to be a standalone WinXP. The reason being, if you ever remove Fedora and grub, you want an easily repairable WinXP. By that time, a lot more effort has been invested in loading up that WinXP with programs and stuff. HTH, Paul |
#9
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partitions got messed up.
"Paul" wrote in message ... Bill Cunningham wrote: It's fedora's grub2 I have no problem with it. It's in the MBR right before the partition table. I have an mbr with grub and one without. And yes there is a way to reinstall grub2 from the linux boot disk. You are right about the LBA parition being inside a ext'd partition. So you think I should make the linux partition active? That I haven't tried. What do you have in mind? Bill Linux doesn't have an active partition. The Linux MBR doesn't check for an active partition. The active flag is considered by a Windows-loaded MBR. Installing grub would re-load the MBR, and eventually boot some grub.cfg with UUID partition addressing. That's how Linux finds the partitions. As far as I know, the partitions can even be located on other disks, so a disk1 grub, could access a disk2 slash partition. If you install grub, after installing Windows, grub can manage the boot process. It "chain loads" Windows. The question then is, whether a Windows partition could be in a logical and still be handed control. My guess is no, and proper maintenance of your new Windows install will be needed, to make it no longer depend on the original WinXP install. grub --- chain_load --- pass control original to new windows windows install With grub installed, then if you delete the original windows in the primary partition, the new windows in the logical partition is an orphan. grub --- ??? --- pass control to new windows install If you make the fourth partition with the new install, into a self-sufficient OS, then chain loading directly to it would work. You'd install grub, after fixing up that fourth partition. At a minimum, you'd have to put some boot files in it (all the invisible files seen on the first WinXP install, that are missing on the second WinXP install. grub ------------------- boot to new windows install Personally, I would fix that fourth partition, to be a standalone WinXP. The reason being, if you ever remove Fedora and grub, you want an easily repairable WinXP. By that time, a lot more effort has been invested in loading up that WinXP with programs and stuff. HTH, Paul Indeed it does. Will give it a try. Bill |
#10
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partitions got messed up.
On 12/18/2014 12:34 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote:
"philo " wrote in message ... If all is working I would not worry about it...but personally I would not use fat32. For it's fault tolerance capabilities I'd never consider not using NTFS I've seen a lot of hacks for NTFS and some maybe worth using. I don't "dislike" NTFS as much as I like simple fat32. No journals, extents and so on that's in NTFS. But the journals are there to save your butt. I've worked on machine that were shut down incorrectly or had failing hard drives and have always been able to save most of the data on an NTFS volume. OTOH: I've seen incorrectly shut down fat32 volumes where CHKDSK (or scandisk) rendered the entire drive full of tiny .CHK files Personally I'd go with NTFS As to the tiny amount of unallocated space...I would totally leave it alone. It's way too small to worry about and I have an odd feeling that if you tried to reclaim it something would get damaged in the process. Bill Yeah I've read that windows and I know XP for sure. Needs that. It is "marked" unallocated but who knows. In this situation. Now if a save my data and zero out the mbr and repartition a new drive, I can split it and there;s no unallocated space. Why do I do this? Well from time to time adware, malware, and who knows what all gets in there and I just erase all and re-install clean. Beats those virus cleaners and such. I do a lot of repair work and never need to reinstall Windows unless there has been a serious compromise. A little malware is usually easy enough to get rid of,,,but if it works for you, who am I to judge? |
#11
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partitions got messed up.
"philo " wrote in message ... On 12/18/2014 12:34 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote: "philo " wrote in message ... If all is working I would not worry about it...but personally I would not use fat32. For it's fault tolerance capabilities I'd never consider not using NTFS I've seen a lot of hacks for NTFS and some maybe worth using. I don't "dislike" NTFS as much as I like simple fat32. No journals, extents and so on that's in NTFS. But the journals are there to save your butt. I've worked on machine that were shut down incorrectly or had failing hard drives and have always been able to save most of the data on an NTFS volume. OTOH: I've seen incorrectly shut down fat32 volumes where CHKDSK (or scandisk) rendered the entire drive full of tiny .CHK files [snip] chkdsk for the most part has always work for me. If part of the filesystem is in memory when your computer is on and you simply turn it off. Well garbage is sometimes written to fat32. I've got "cross-linked files" "truncated files" and so on. And a lot of chk files and .000 files. But I just erase those later. Bill |
#12
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partitions got messed up.
Another thing is that the MFT gets pretty fagmented sometimes. I don't
know if you can defrag it or not. And all files are mentioned there. The MFT Zone that takes up space on the HD can be changed from 12.5% to 50% or more of the drive. But it's not defragged through "normal" means. Bill |
#13
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partitions got messed up.
On 12/18/2014 07:06 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote:
" I've worked on machine that were shut down incorrectly or had failing hard drives and have always been able to save most of the data on an NTFS volume. OTOH: I've seen incorrectly shut down fat32 volumes where CHKDSK (or scandisk) rendered the entire drive full of tiny .CHK files [snip] chkdsk for the most part has always work for me. If part of the filesystem is in memory when your computer is on and you simply turn it off. Well garbage is sometimes written to fat32. I've got "cross-linked files" "truncated files" and so on. And a lot of chk files and .000 files. But I just erase those later. Bill When the day comes that /all/ your data are written to CHK files you'll wish you had used NTFS |
#14
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partitions got messed up.
On 12/18/2014 07:11 PM, Bill Cunningham wrote:
Another thing is that the MFT gets pretty fagmented sometimes. I don't know if you can defrag it or not. And all files are mentioned there. The MFT Zone that takes up space on the HD can be changed from 12.5% to 50% or more of the drive. But it's not defragged through "normal" means. Bill I ignore the MFT and it ignores me but like I said, were it not for the MFT some of the data recovery jobs I've done would never have been possible. I have seen near miracles happen on severely damaged drives. |
#15
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partitions got messed up.
"philo " wrote in message ... I ignore the MFT and it ignores me but like I said, were it not for the MFT some of the data recovery jobs I've done would never have been possible. I have seen near miracles happen on severely damaged drives. There seems to be something else I have noticed. Ntfs seems to fragment much more quickly than fat32 when dual booting with a linux partition. I am assuming the reporting is correct. Otherwise I've noticed with ntfs and *not* using linux ntfs does not fragment as quickly as fat32. Now I had all kinds of trouble with Fat16. Maybe it was the speed of the floppy drives back then in reading 3.5" floppies or what. Again it's not that I have anything against ntfs. I have used it quite a bit. And will again. But not lately. I'm really experimenting with the two also. And portability across platforms. Linux reads and writes to ntfs just fine now so that's not an issue. Bill |
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