stupid stupid dual booting w/ linux

I don't think it was that. I'm not really sure why it stopped working. I finally got around to running chkdsk from the recovery dvd and it booted up into the chkdsk on the HD which I let run as well and it was fine. The first run of chkdsk said it found and fixed one error but didnt say what it was.

If you have two drives -- make sure the XP drive is setup to boot first in your bios boot order -- Another thing to look at -- IDE drives tend to boot before SATA drives if you have a mixed lot.

Does your bios boot screen correctly list all your peripheral devices -- HD's and CD/DVD readers?



Mule

Just a quick off-topic question. Why do you want two os's on a computer?

muledeer said:

If you have two drives -- make sure the XP drive is setup to boot first in your bios boot order -- Another thing to look at -- IDE drives tend to boot before SATA drives if you have a mixed lot.

Does your bios boot screen correctly list all your peripheral devices -- HD's and CD/DVD readers?



Mule

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I dont remember what type of drives they are, but I think theyre both SATA. The windows drive is the primary drive and the boot screen lists all my drives correctly.

freshert said:

Just a quick off-topic question. Why do you want two os's on a computer?

Click to expand...

Well in my case, Windows is great for games or internet, but I do a a lot of programming for work and school and Linux is just much easier to work in. Plus most science based communities use some form of UNIX based OS for this very reason and when you use multiple computers it is much easier to use the same type of OS rather than try to make the two communicate with each other.

freshert said:

Just a quick off-topic question. Why do you want two os's on a computer?

Click to expand...

Most people who install linux will leave their windows partition there for playing games or specific software they need for which there is no linux equivalent.
There aren't a lot of popular mainstream games for linux, and using wine (a windows "emulator") to play windows games doesn't always work well.

I for instance, paid $300 for a used copy of Photoshop, which I find a lot easier to use than The Gimp, so I leave a small xp partition laying around for graphic design.

I also leave xp installed on any computer I'm installing linux on until I make sure all the bugs are worked out with drivers etc... For example, I can't get the 2nd monitor in my dual monitor setup to rotate, so I can't use linux on my desktop computer. If I had nuked my XP partition I would have had to start from scratch.

As for why you'd install linux in the first place, it's a very powerful operating system that is years beyond windows in features and security... Whenever I install windows I have to change a million settings, show hidden files, turn off system restore, fast indexing service, print spooling, pcmcia services, wifi services (on my desktop) and a few dozen other things that don't help me, but slow the computer way down.. I have to then install all the software I need on a day-to-day basis... winrar, firefox, vlc, a billion video codecs, AIM, utorrent, etc etc.. Linux comes with all of these by default and the default settings are a lot more sane. Linux is also a lot more powerful as a programming platform, since all of the programming tools you need are built right into the OS.. it's really trivial to write up a tiny program to do what you need, like the LPF PM Downloader script I wrote on the help/suggestion board.. or a little script that lives on my wireless router that checks a certain email address every few minutes to see if I've sent a text message to it containing a specific code, and turns on my computer if it does.. (so if I'm anywhere in the world, I can turn on my home computer from my cell phone)... it also has a ton of powerful networking features, things like a SSH server, an FTP server, a VNC server, would all be a pain to download install and configure on windows, are all built into linux... so instead of paying $50 for PC-Anywhere, $30 for WinSSHD, and $30 for an FTP server, all this is installed configured and ready to go by default in linux... so anywhere in the world I can use my home computer as if I was sitting in front of it.

I would say to either reinstall GRUB or Windows Bootloader. Use the Supergrub ISO, or run fixmbr in your windows disc.

360freak said:

I would say to either reinstall GRUB or Windows Bootloader. Use the Supergrub ISO, or run fixmbr in your windows disc.

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we've already established several times that that's not the problem...

if his mbr or boot sector were corrupt, he wouldn't be able to get to the windows loading screen... it would give an error the second it tried to boot. by the fact that he's able to partially boot, means that he has a correct and functioning mbr and boot sector.

Yep. The MBR is fine. Yet somehow a damaged windows xp installation after an upgrade. If the windows filesystem checks out OK, which it apparently did, I'm afraid I'm out of clues for this one. I'd try repairing windows with the windows xp cd (not recovery console).

I have encountered a similar situation before, try to use a bootable partitioning software to see if your xp partition is active or not.

it would also be that it has the "hidden" flag on it.

I already fixed it by the way for anyone who didn't catch that. I think there was just some file not quite right. I ran chkdsk form the recovery cd and it booted up fine.