Syd

I can't personally remember where I saw this problem before, but I can perhaps give you a hint that will help you search it.

The problem appeared on the Redhat Install List not too long ago (certainly less than a fortnight ago), and someone replied with a short explanation and a URL.

It seems that there is a basic incompatibility in the way XP reads the MBR data structure. Although the data structure of the MBR is supposed to adhere to a standard, XP has a flaw in the way it reads it, and although most of the time the problem doesn't rear its head, there are occasions when XP confuses itself when particular combinations of partitions appear in the MBR (I'm not explaining this well, but I didn't understand it too well either lol)

The end result however, is that although XP sees the partition, it actually tries to read from the wrong starting point on the disk when accessing the partition where it thinks its boot sector is. (Or so I understood).

Hope this helps you find the answer.

TD

On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 08:39, syd wrote:

This is indirectly linux-related.

My newly-purchased laptop has XP installed. Mandrake 9.1 happily resized the NTFS partition and installed easily. (There is an issue related to Xfree 4.3.0 but otherwise all went very well).

However in playing around late at night with other installs I have managed to do something nasty to the XP loader - MBR seems OK and the partition table seems OK so no idea what it is. One of the wierd 'hidden' partitions maybe.

Although losing windows may be seen as a bonus feature not a problem <g> I wonder if any one out there can help at all? XP of course did not come with an install CD - AFAIK there should be an image on the HD somewhere.

Answers off-list please and apologies to anyone who sees this is inappropriate for this list. I blame human error - and MS - not linux BTW.

Regards Syd

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