windows has been having this problem since SuSE 7.1 or before

In 2000 I bought SuSE at bestbuy. It had 7 cds and a dvd packed with over 2000 programs. I installed it and had problems with a sound card and then had a HUGE db project to work on for my job. the project took all my time and I didn't have the time to get linux installed (and it was a little harder to find help online back then)

When I went to put 98 back on it I had the same problem but it was only a 4gig drive and i said what the heck and bought a new one that held 20 gigs and never thought about it until i needed a PC to give my mom. thats when I found the privously mentioned swissknife program.

the bottom line is

You would think that in four years or so MS would be able to use all of its great resources to be able to correctly format a hard drive. One would think they would like to be able to write over any other OSes partitions.

I guess this is just another thing windows continues to suck at.

I had the same problem.
Solution

1. Boot with a floppy disk that also contains fdisk.exe.
2. Enter fdisk and delete all partitions except the one that contains Win XP.
3. Make the partition active.
4. Return to a:/
3. enter "fdisk/mbr"

When you re-boot Win XP will boot.

Hope this solves your problem

Best way I know to clean up a hard drive.. Low Level Format..

You need a windows 98 boot disk with "Debug" on it.

at the c:\ prompt type: ("enter" after each line.. case sensitive)
Debug
-f 200 L1000 0
-a CS:100
mov ax,301
mov bx,200
mov cx,1
mov dx,80 (81 if slave)
int 13
int 20
<enter>
-g
"Program terminated normally" --or something to that effect..
-q
should be back to the c:\ prompt.
go to fdisk and create a new dos partition. (pretty much "enter" all the way through unless you want multiple partitions.)


I have been doing this to HD's for years and has not failed me once.

-Charles

I find the best way is a bootable floppy disk Killdisk a free download. which erases hdds or partitions and is a full level format which will better in the long run. You could erase the linux partition here.
http://killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

I had some trouble with a drive after I used some crappy partitioning and recovery software. I found a useful iso image called Darik's Boot and Nuke or DBAN for short, it uses a nuber of different data destruction methods, including a department of defensemethod. anyway run this, and there wont be nutthin left, floppy version is available as well. http://dban.sourceforge.net

Hey man, I had the same problem too. FC2 did ruin my PC. But there is a workaround. First, to answer a few qs of yours ...

Yes, your partition tables are f'cked.
No, your bootloader still operates fine.
Yes, you can continue to use your PC as normal with the screwed partition tables.

Go into your BIOS and go to the settings for your master hard drive. Try selecting "large" or "LBA" for the read/write mode. It'll fix it easy as that. Your partition tables are screwed, but your computer won't know the difference until you try running PartitionMagic (if you have it). Man, when I ran it, it was just owning my hard drive. But it still ran. To be confortable, I reinstalled WinXP (NT5) and RH9 Linux (NOT FC2!). I backed up all my stuff to a 10GB drive beforehand though.

Hope this helps ... I'm one of the few out there that know the workaround to this problem

I've had the same problem w/ my partition table being screwed. My workaround was accidental and I'm still not sure exactly why it works, but I'll bet someone will. I still have Fedora installed on one harddrive and WinXP on another.

If I boot up it will not find the operating system unless the Win XP cd is in the drive. It will ask you to press any key to boot from cd. I just let it time out, then it goes to my windows boot loader asking whether I want XP or Fedora.

Workarounds are inconvenient, but hey, they work.

xianpoxi

hi all

Prevention

prevention relies on you havinbg access to Linux on the computer before installing FC2. use an existing instalation or rescue disk. i used knoppix. (as root) and type
#fdisk -l /dev/hda

at the top of the output you should see something like

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77545 cylinders

your output, obviously, will be specific to your HD. take a note of the cylinders, heads & sectors.

begin instalation of FC2, when you see the
boot:
prompt, type
linux hda=77545,255,63

this tells the partitioning tool to use these values.

Cure

if you've already installed FC2 and need to fix the prob, here is the cure. open a terminal as root and type
#sfdisk -d /dev/hda | egrep -v '^(Warning|DOS)' | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda

this reads the current geometry from the disk, strips out any warning info with egrep and writes it back to the disk with the corrected heads values.

referenced from Linux Format mag LXF56 August 2004, page 49 and also
http://lwn.net/Articles/86835

hope this helps
regards
GT

A modification to Globetrotter....

I tried that but sfdisk didn't like it and left things as they were. So what I did was use the 'force' flag after both sfdisk commands (I'm not sure if it's needed after the first command but I put it in anyway).

So the first sfdisk should be 'sfdisk -d -f' and the second should be 'sfdisk -f --no-reread'.

This worked for me and I'm now dual booting XP and FC2.

HTH.

Viscus

Well, my experience with FC2 and it's installation is quite different. I have 2 harddisks. hda is 40GB and hdb is 20GB. HDA is dedicated to windows XP sp1 and hdb is for linux.
From the time I have learnt to install and use linux, I have never installed grub or lilo to the MBR. Instead, I have always installed grub or lilo to the first sector of the root partition where Linux is installed. Then, I use a freeware called XOSL, which is a multi-OS boot manager. It can be installed through DOS/Windows. So, I install XOSL on a DOS drive and this loads up during the boot process. There you can choose which drive to boot into, by selecting that particular drive in the setup. (for further details, read it's doc or do a google search). So, if i install another O.S, i simply select that drive in XOSL and i boot into that O.S.
So, before installing FC2, I had windows XP sp1 on HDA1 and SUSE pro 9.1 on HDB5. So, while installing FC2, I got some drive allignment problem warning, which i decided to ignore. While selecting, where to install grub, i chose to install it on the first sector of the root partition for FC2, i.e, in my case HDB1. Then, after install and reboot, I enable HDB1 in XOSL's setup and I now can boot into FC2, Windows and SUSE. I didn't face any of the problems of not being able to load windows. Also, in the future, if I install any new O.S. like some BSD then i install its bootloader into the first sector of the install drive and enable that drive in XOSL. Also, if i need to reinstall Windows, it is bound to rewrite the mbr in order to load only Windows. In that case, I reinstall XOSL that is a Child's play, (you don't need to be a geek or a nerd :-), and enable all those drive partitions that have O.S's installed on them. Then, choose which ever to boot into.. ASAT(As simple as that ;-)

Do you have a SATA harddrive? Chances are you will need a update disk to install XP (I assume you're installing XP) onto a SATA drive.

Yup, that was it, that d*mned FC2 just materialized out of the aether and d*mn if it didn't find my computer and install itself, f*cking my M$ XP Pro install.

Always back up important data, especially stuff you can't afford to lose. Even have backups offsite if it's that important to you. Some people have production machines and others for hacking around. It's amazing how useful Linux is at recycling hardware that won't work with XP, I gave away a scanner that would never have XP drivers but worked in Linux. Then my headless raid5 server would've cost a few thousand more if done in M$.

I installed FC2 the night it hit the mirrors on my laptop and yes the partition table got funky but at least it still booted. I think part of the issue is the board's bios. BUT, I did find the cure here on LQ from the good souls who have even consistently taken their time and patience to help out some badmouthing posters. Take some time and search LQ, google and get an idea what's going on. Use the resources that are freely available. Learn to read and think before lashing out. The cure for your problems were posted here months before you had them. It's not always easy or productive to search when you really don't even know where to start but perspective is important. (I'm taking my time to post this for all who may read it, to provide encouragement for those who may need it.)

I also have FC2 on a dedicated machine (nForce2) and dual booted on my preschooler's (kt133a) and had it dual booted on another (sis735). All worked fine when following the instructions of those who took their time to post and explain how to do it. In short the help you get here only cost your time not the $35 or more that some proprietary types charge just to answer the phone whether they solve your problem or not.

linux hd_=cylinders, heads, sectors is your friend if you want to use FC2.

Thanks to all that have made my Linux experience fruitful.

Oh yeah, there's that shelf full of Linux books that I've read in the past year or so.

You get what you pay for, sometimes.

If you are fimiliar with DOS. You might wanna try to obtain a Windows 98 Boot Disk. Then enter the 'FDISK' command and delete all of the partitions. Then create a new partition and allocate all available space on the drive. Then you must reboot and re-enter the the boot disk. Then in the DOS prompts.. format the hard drive. Then you can try re-installing Windows.

I have had this problem before. If you simply delete the partitions, the Linux Boot Record will remain un-noticed. Let me know if this works.

Hi,

There is an article on solving this problem in the latest Personal Computer World (November 2004) by Barry Shilliday (Page 194).

He describes this royal screw-up as a "huge embarrassment" to the Fedora Core Project. He's right and it's almost unbelievable that they would release FC2 before thoroughly testing it's ability to dual-boot with Windows. They must know that a large number of users will be running both systems.

According to the article the problem has arisen from using the new 2.6 kernel and the partitioning utility "parted". When "parted" saves changes to the partitions to disk it writes inconsistent CHS values along with the correct linear addresses. As Windows checks the CHS values when it starts up this can have the unfortunate effect of preventing Windows from booting although it will not affect Linux.

Hope this helps.

Alan

Does the above post mean its safe to download FC3 and not have this happen? Did they fix it?