xp is unbootable in XP/vista dual boot setup

Terry60 said:
There's no grldr except in the HnS installation folder because the way HnS works is by renaming Vista's bootmgr to bootmgr.hnS (yes that's the real one) and usurping the boot process by putting grub4dos (grldr) in its place (renamed as bootmgr).
That way the normal Vista MBR/IPL looks for its own bootmgr but is fooled into executing a disguised grub. Grub then chains the renamed Vista bootmgr or NTLDR as required having done the necessary hiding/unhiding first.
Click to expand...
Ahh, ok..so that's how it works. I was thinking before that maybe it modifies the Vista PBR slightly, so it knows to look for a file called BOOTMGR.HnS, instead of the standard bootmgr. But, I see now that it still looks for the bootmgr file, only the bootmgr file was replaced with grldr, which was renamed to bootmgr, which in turn points to bootmgr.hns, which is actually the real bootmgr.
But, if that's the case, and it calls up the Grub4Dos GRLDR, renamed as BOOTMGR, then shouldn't the BOOTMGR (i.e. the disguised grub loader) be on the C: partition, in his case, since it is "active" and "system"? Because, according to the screenshot posted of his D: partition contents, it exists instead in the root of that partition, which is not "active"...
I would think that what would have to be there (i.e. in the D: partition's root) is the (real) bootmgr, which was renamed to BOOTMGR.HnS. But, it seems the fake BOOTMGR was placed on D: instead.
Could that be part of his problem?
 
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When Vista is "system", and gets hidden when XP boots, the boot would fail if HnS didn't duplicate the bootmgr (grldr) on the booted system. So you'll see a copy on every XP system I think.
You can see it in the log

7:18 PM Renaming BOOTMGR, creating GRLDR on C:\
7:18 PM Renaming BOOTMGR, creating GRLDR on D:\
7:18 PM Updating the bootsector on all partitions.
7:18 PM HnS installation successfully completed. Happy dual-booting!
NeoSmart intelliLogger 1.0

It didn't happen on my system because XP was system, so it never got hidden.
On my custom version, bootmgr (grub) sits in its own tiny partition, so it's immune from hiding and the only copy needed.
 
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It's what the makeactives are there for I think. (I've removed them from my menu.lst).
The hides are done before the chaining
When you're in XP Vista is hidden, but XP has been "madeactive". When you reboot to Vista, the MBR will find the duplicate bootmgr on XP (because its still active) and issue the unhides to bring Vista out of limbo before making Vista active and chaining to the real (.HnS) bootmgr.
 
Terry60 said:
It's what the makeactives are there for I think. (I've removed them from my menu.lst).
The hides are done before the chaining
When you're in XP Vista is hidden, but XP has been "madeactive". When you reboot to Vista, the MBR will find the duplicate bootmgr on XP (because its still active) and issue the unhides to bring Vista out of limbo before making Vista active and chaining to the real (.HnS) bootmgr.
Click to expand...
Ok, I realize that. But let's say you were in Vista last, and wanted to boot into XP. That would mean the bootmgr (grldr) on the Vista partition would be the one that is being used, not the one on the XP partition. So, how exactly does it chain to NTDLR then if it has already hidden itself? The "makeactive" just changes which partition is chained to from the IPL at startup, so if you were in Vista last, the Vista partition would still be set to "active", and the bootmgr (grldr) that's on the Vista partition would be the one that is used. So, if the hide (of Vista's partition) begins before the chaining, after selecting the XP entry in the menu, how does it even find NTDLR, and chain to it, if it has hidden itself? :brows:

Jake
 
most of that information went way over my head, i will continue nonetheless I guess, i did however make the change terry suggested and now my new menu.lst file looks like this, which gives an error 17 partition can't be mounted, i tried changing the hd0,0 thing. last digit i tried changing to 0 and 2, both fail, and with 2, the partition doesn't exist, anyways the current status of the file is as follows


# NeoSmart Technologies' Vista Hide 'n Seek Beta
# DO NOT MODIFY!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

timeout 30
default 0
splashimage=/vhns.xpm.gz
foreground 000000
background ffffff

title Microsoft Windows Vista
find --unhide /Vista.C.HnS
find --set-root /BOOTMGR.HNS
makeactive
chainloader /BOOTMGR.HNS
boot

title Windows XP [D:\]
find --hide /Vista.C.HnS
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader /ntldr
boot

# All your boot are belong to NeoSmart!
 
Yeah, I don't think Grub (that includes all versions) likes RAID for some reason...
One thing you may want to try searching for (using Google) is "Grub" and "RAID" together, and see what you come up with. I'll do the same, and let you know if I find anything.

Addendum:

Here's something you may want to look over (I'm reviewing it myself right now):
http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2003-July/008898.html
 
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well i did that edit from the menu at system start like was also suggested, or i checked it, didn't change anything though. I did find something of interest, and which is confusing. under the possible partition numbers there is only 0 and 1

however, for partition 0 the filesystem is listed as unknown

also the partition type for 0 is 0x17
for 1 is 0x7


no idea what those numbers mean, if anything, well with that i think I'm caught up on reccomendations anyways

Addendum:

i think possibly, the filesystem unknown thing is why its not mounting, and because of the raid, its possibly just looking at one hardrive, instead of the 2 of them as a raid set, which if only seeing half the data, of course it would be unrecognizable, but then if thats the case i would of thought that the vista start wouldn't work either for the same reason, but I don't know. Just making guesses here
 
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0 and 1 for your partitions just means you have two partitions on your disk (the count begins at 0), which is true. From Windows, the two partitions are seen as C: and D.
 
possibly this could mean that I should modify the hd0,1 thing to possibly something along the lines of hd0,0,1 though again i have no clue what the correct syntax and such would be
 
charlie256 said:
possibly this could mean that I should modify the hd0,1 thing to possibly something along the lines of hd0,0,1 though again i have no clue what the correct syntax and such would be
Click to expand...
No, "root (hd0,1)" is correct. It simply means disk 0, and partition 1 (actually, its the second partition since the count begins at 0 for both drives and partitions). Your XP partition is the second partition (i.e. partition 1).
 
eh looks like i made a type a bit ago, i meant to say that the partition 1, which is where xp is located, is the one that shows as unknown partition type in the edit menu thing

partition 0 where vista is, shows as ntfs as it should

Addendum:

using info gleaned from Gentoo Bug 54721 - Grub and software RAID-0,1,5 fail to read partition type 0xfd it seems maybe that grub does work with raid0, but only with 1 partition, any additional partitions wouldn't be recognized, but then i could of misunderstood the page, but then multiple partitions is necessary for Hns anyways.
 
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yes thats what i was more or less meaning, and because its shown as unknown, there probably no way grub can do anything with it, so it seems to me that probably the only way to fix such a problem is modifying the grub code itself.....which i of course have no idea how to do that. Anyways though a raid0 update to the grub code will likely be of use to some people anyways.
I think I might have to just reinstall everything though unfortunately, since its been such a pain trying to get the dual boot working on my setup, nevertheless it would be nice to have the problem fixed sometime for everyone else having the same problem. Since it seems that raid and grub simply aren't compatible currently.

Addendum:

regardless though, I'd still like to know what the solution or workaround is, if there is one. For my benefit and anyone else with the same problem, which seems to be anyone with raid and dual boot/grub
 
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Well, I'll keep looking, and let you know if I find anything. Don't give up just yet...:wink:

Cheers.

Addendum:

I think you should check your XP partition with TestDisk though, just in case there is a problem with your XP partition (I mean, other than it being RAID...:brows:smile:. It can repair a lot of partition problems.
In case my original hunch was correct, and the "unknown filesystem type" message has nothing to do with whether XP can be booted or not, if the RAID/Grub issue can be solved, I'm currently researching the possibilities of booting RAID partitions with Grub (there has got to be a way).

Jake

Addendum:

Ok, so try replacing your whole XP entry in the menu.lst with:
title Windows XP [D:\]
hide (hd0,0)
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader /ntldr
boot

# All your boot are belong to NeoSmart!
Click to expand...
EDIT: Nevermind. You're certain to get the same error 17. Well, my advice at this point would be to either forget about the restore points issue now, and just use EasyBCD to dual-boot if you don't want the unecessary hassle of getting this thing to work (which I'm really not sure how much it'll take), or as a second option, try using either RAID 1 or RAID 5, which according to the stuff I read works with Grub, while RAID 0 doesn't for some reason. Of course, even then, there is no guarantee that will work. So your best option yet may be to just simply use EasyBCD for now, or use a normal hard drive/partitions.
 
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currently running the error checking utility under system tools in vista, running that on d drive, will take awhile to finish, then i will try rebooting with the changes you made and see if that works.
 
well i did both those things, except now i have to find this testdisk program you seem to be indicating, but anyways the xp partition still shows as unknown type and i still get the error 17 cannot mount selected partition error

Addendum:

well that program is too complicated, i don't like it, no gui, and yea no simple stuff there like the size of partitions in megs for example. additionally, the program seems to be more oriented towards finding deleted files and partitions and such, which isn't what i was trying to do, but as i said, i had just run the check disk for errors feature in vista. Anyways its getting late here, so I'm going to sleep. Thanks for your assistance so far.
 
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Jake, in answer to your post #44, it's not grldr that has a problem with hidden drives, it can ignore the bit and carry on.
The problem is with the MBR IPL, which can't locate bootldr if it's on a hidden partition. So Guru puts one on each XP if the Vista drive is "system".
 
charlie256 said:
Addendum:

well that program is too complicated, i don't like it, no gui, and yea no simple stuff there like the size of partitions in megs for example. additionally, the program seems to be more oriented towards finding deleted files and partitions and such, which isn't what i was trying to do, but as i said, i had just run the check disk for errors feature in vista. Anyways its getting late here, so I'm going to sleep. Thanks for your assistance so far.
Click to expand...
Its not that complicated. Try this...
Open up testdisk_win.exe
The option "[Create] Create a new log file" should already be selected. So press Enter. Now, on the next screen that appears, drive sda and "Proceed" should already be selected. So press Enter again. On the next screen that appears, the option "[Intel] Intel/PC partition" should already be selected. So press Enter again. Now, on the next screen that appears with a list of options, you need to press the down arrow so that the option "[Advanced] Filesystem utils" is selected. Now, press Enter again. On the next screen that appears, you should see both the Vista and XP partitions. So go ahead, and select the XP partition, by pressing the down arrow on your keyboard. The option "[Boot] Boot sector recovery" at the bottom of the screen should already be selected. So press Enter again. If there's a problem with the bootsector, Testdisk will fix it.

Cheers.

Jake
 
yep still complciated, i got where you suggested with your assistance, but still using terms that don't make sense, i don't think it found anything, but then i figured I'd try the fix mft and then rebuild boot sector options. however when i fixed MFT it asks "fix mft mirror using mft?" what is that?
 
"MFT" stands for "Master File Table", which is basically a table of contents for your partition's filesystem. It helps the system find where a particular file is located in the filesystem. Just hit the "Y" key, which means yes.
 
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