bikerj, if you go to easyurpmi (google it) and add a plf source to your software repositories, you can uprmi ogle and get Mandrake to play DVD movies for you. Linux printer support is pretty decent now. I'm surprised you are having a hard time. maybe you should post a new thread to get that stuff up and running before you fall victim to yet another microsoft-attacking worm. I swear there's a new one every 1 or 2 days now.

I had the same problem with MDK10.0 like everybody else (not being able to boot up MDK) . I tried to install it on 5/6 different computers with different configs... I found one that BOOTED up from the first CD (wow...)

The first thing that happened: Windows went bye-bye... I used MDK's partitioning tools and I almost lost all the data on my HDD... Long live Knoppix live-cd that got me out of the trouble with some real tools (unlike those in the MDK's rescue I found)

I got the Command Prompt GRUB Version (Linux was installed beyond the 1024 cilinder, or at least this is what I understood from the error messages...). I couldn't boot up Windows XP, couldn't fix it, so I backed up my data and reformatted... I couldn't install Windows XP before I erased my ENTIRE partition table starting at sector 0. (I could only install Windows 98SE, not even Me).

I cleanly installed Windows XP, then I Installed MDK10.0. i used LILO (graphic) which worked perfectly! I could boot both Windows and Linux (plus the floppy boot).

What I suggest other users if they can't boot up their Windows: Boot from floppy the MDK10.0 and type rescue at start-up... From the rescue menu choose re-install boot loader. In my case it reinstalled LILO, even though I had GRUB previously installed. Read the output from the bootloader instalation and see if it finds your windows partition... If everything is OK, press CTRL+ALT+DEL and enjoy Windows.

I am a Linux Newbie and had WIN2K running on my machine. Installed Mandrake 10.0 Community, and even though LILO shows Windows with the correct mount point, when I select that option at boot time, it just says "NTLDR not found". I've spent one full day searching through documentation and googling, and tried many of the suggestions including booting through a Win2K disk and running "FIXMBR" and "FIXBOOT", but none of that have worked.
Looks like i'll have to re-install Windows, and I'd hate to do that.
Any suggestions? Please email at aravindps at yahoo dott com
Thanks a lot
~Aravind

Giv e us the specs on your machine..... what motherboard, CPU ... etc.

Surfduke

Machine - P IV 1.7 GHz, 256 MB Ram, Intel chipset motherboard, 40GB hard drive, ASUS CD ROM Drive, LG CD Re-writer, On-board sound and video card, samsung monitor, 10/100 ethernet card, rest are standard.
Thanks.
~aravind

Hello aravindps:

First of all don't feel alone in this... many of us have had the same kind of problem at least once in our Linux-life.

The main problem is the Windows is very "jealous" with the MBR (portion of the disc used to boot the S.O.), so, in some versions of Windows(2000/XP), if you modify the MBR (i.e. installing a GNU/Linux distribution) the Windows S.O. refuses to boot.

At this time, I don't know how to solve this... B U T... I know how to prevent it, so, if you install your Windows and Mandrake Linux again, you can be SURE this problem won't happen again.

This are the instructions:

1.- Install Mandrake as always. But when you arrive to the "Install Bootloader" part, choose "ON FLOPPY"

2.- Insert a good, clean, formatted disk in you diskette drive and press next.

3.- make your desired changes to the loader.

And that's all!! now you have the LILO in a diskette, so no MBR changes happens

This option is very usefull with PCs using Win2000/XP and Linux. When you want to run Linux, simply put the diskette inside the drive and reboot... and if you want to use windows, put out the diskette and reboot again...

I hope this can help you to solve this inconvenience... Regards!!

Hi Guys, Finally managed to figure out how to get Windows back..
Windows 2000 was originally installed on my D:\ because I was running Windows ME on C:\.. All LILO recognized was that there was a Windows Operating system installed on the second partition of my hard drive, so whenever I selected Windows during LILO bootup, it just handed over control to that partition. However, the way windows is architectured, the system threw an error that it was a non-system disk - because there were NO boot files - the Boot sequence files of WIN2K - boot.ini, ntldr and NTDETECT.COM are in C:\!!!
I just copied these 3 files to the partition where WIN2K was installed and everything became hunky dory again!! Now LILO shows up at first, if i select Windows, It shows me the old Win2K bootup menu, and my life is peaceful again, especially since i need to write some VB code soon.
Btw, since i've logged on to windows, i've been repeatedly hit by some new virus - W32.Explet.A@mm. Linux does rock!
Thanks for all ur suggestions...
~Aravind

I don't know if anyone has found a concrete solution to this problem, but I was having the same issue with Debian. After partitioning with and using kernel 2.6, it apparently uses bad drive geometry. I was getting the same problems as some of you, but I don't have time to read through the entire post to see if anyone mentioned this fix.

My first instinct is to warn you that I have no idea how this works or what it is doing, so unless you don't mind hosing your hard drive, I don't know if I would try it(unless you know how it works). I would also like to mention that I found this solution on redhats bugzilla website: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/...buglist=115980

My installation installed grub and linux booted fine, but windows would hang as if there wasn't anything to load. So I did all the fixmbr stuff that everyone has tried, and it told me missing operating system. I reformatted the whole hard drive, setup xp, and debian again with the same results. I spent hours upon hours upon hours on this. Then I read that bugzilla report. Here is the solution that I tried that worked for me:

i found solution try this:
sfdisk -d /dev/hda > temp.txt
vi temp.txt and remove line up to comment line (Exeption explanation
message)
then:
cat temp.txt | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda

except I got an error message when I ran the
"cat temp.txt | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda"

So instead I had to run I then restarted the machine and it booted like a dream. I am assuming that mandrake 10 uses the 2.6 kernel, but I honestly don't know much about mandrake or even linux in general. As I said before, I don't know what this does so I wouldn't take it lightly, but it worked for me, and apparently many others. Hopefully this helps some poor souls like me!

-Knappster

I didn't go through all post in here, so maybe my solution has been posted, i know parts of it has (thx for the great reply's!)

I ran into this exact same problem. Windows wouldn't boot. But I had a little twist. My mandrake wouldn't shut down probably, so I switched it off, after the shut down process had stalled for over an hour by it's last command.

This - in some odd way - managed to destroy lilo, or at least put mandrake out for quite a rew reboots, so nothing worked.

I tried many of the bootdisk, MBRwiz and whatnot and nothing seemed to work. Then I tried the "use LBA insted of auto for your hd in bios"-method mentioned a few time, and then I saw that none of my discs were listed in my bios anymore.

So after trying a lot of things in vain (incl a lot of bootdisk that couldn't find ANY harddrives, I ended up switching off the power instead of just alt+ctr+del.

This resultet in lilo starting, but it still couldn't boot windows. But it did start mandrake. So something was running now. My mandrak (and knoppix) has placed to hd-links/folders on my desktop. one named "hd" and one named "hd_c2" none of witch contained any files. When I sor this in knoppix i thought it was because both my harddisks were gone (I have xp on hda (c:) and linux on hdb (d:))

but when I saw it in mandrake, i knew that atleast hdb worked. So i doubled checked mnt folder and found a hd_c, hd_c2 and a windows folder (or is it a drive? I don't understand linux that well...)

And luckily one of these contained all my beloved xp and personel files (which weren't backed up)

I then went to config, boot and added a new boot, chose "other (windows)" said ok a few times, rebooted and choose the new boot option from lilo, and guess what: Im in xp now!!

Boy, turned out to be a long story.... Well hope this will help, and that I haven't repeated anybody too much.

Once again, thanks for the many post in this thread, I wouldn't have overcomed this without them.

This may not help some of you, but here's how I handled this using BootMagic (included with the latest version of PartitionMagic.)

I use WinXP MCE on a Toshiba P25-S607. To prepare to setup my system to dual-boot, I bought a copy of PartitionMagic in order to resize the NTFS partition and create the Linux partitions and a new FAT32 partition for data and BootMagic. (This is not for the faint of heart -- don't try to resize a NTFS partition without a full backup, just in case.) After all the partitions were created, I installed BootMagic on the new FAT32 partition and added the Linux ext2 partition to the boot menu. Then I booted the 1st Mandrake 10.0 install disk and followed the directions.

Here's the critical bit -- the installer gave me the choice of installing LILO either in the MBR, or in the ext2 partition. The first time, I picked the MBR. (After all, it was *recommended* right?) Sure enough, WinXP no longer booted. I booted the PartitionMagic disk and ran BootMagic from DOS. It turns out that installing LILO in the MBR disabled the BootMagic loader. So I re-enabled BootMagic, rebooted the Mandrake install disk, and re-installed Mandrake. At the bootloader install screen, I told the installer to put LILO on the ext2 partition. This fixed it. BootMagic gives me a menu at startup to select between WinXP and Linux. Both boot up correctly now.

(Now if I can just get a nVidia FX5200 driver to work instead of the generic vesa display driver...)

So we have all had a few issues installing Linux & Windows XP as duel boot system. I read through part of this thread and was curious hwat the problem was. I installed Windows XP and selected the size of the partition I wanted and then did the install. I then checked the BIOS on my laptop and it has no setting for LBA so this wasn't going to work as described earlier. I then installed Mandrake 10.0 on the computer & restarted the computer at every major step. Windows XP will boot after every step in the installation process except for the boot-loader, this is what is killing the install. It is over-writing the MBR and Windows XP can no longer boot. What I did was install the boot loader and then rebooted the computer with the Mandrake CD and typed repair at the advanced prompt. I went and had the Microsoft boot loader installed again and restarted the computer. Once I booted it normally it would boot into Windows XP again so I booted it off of the Mandrake CD again typed repair once more but this time I reinstalled the Linux boot loader from the menu and now everything works properly as a duel boot system using the Linux boot loader.

I was really amazed by some of the comments in this thread before I got sick of reading the thread. I found it absolutely amazing that someone would bitch because Linux & Windows can't install properly. I mean, should Linux really have to make their product compatible with Microsoft? Is it Linux's responsibility to warn people that these two operating systems may not work correctly together? Linux is a replacement for Windows not an upgrade, this is one of the alternatives. Why wouldn'y they bitch at Microsoft, I'm sure they paid a lot more for that product so it should be the one that must work. If you ever wonder what is wrong with the world today you can read some of the comments in this thread and you will know, I'm surprised there wasn't talk of a class action law suite.

Complaining aside, above is what I did to get this to work in my laptop. If you have the same problem as everyone else then I believe it is the boot loader that is causing you grief. I did multiple installs and could always boot Windows until I installed boot loader, if you have the problems like those in this thread I think you can do as I did above and this would fix your problem.

Cheers, Dennis

I HAVE NEVER had a problem with a dual boot WinXP and MDK Linux. PERIOD. I always start off with a clean drive and when I say clean I mean I use the hard drive manufacture utilities and write 0's to every part of the drive. I mean clean. I then let Windows and NOTHING but windows create it's own partitions(NOBODY understands M$ partitioning system like M$). I then install MDK on the empty partition letting it set the boot loader. It has NEVER failed me. I have installed at least50 to 75 dual boot XP and Linux with never a problem.

I have read all the messages in this thread, and especially the last one I agree.

I too installed MDK onto a XP machine, after freeing up some space on HD with Partition Magic. MDK brill - XP would not boot, just a flashing cursor, very scary.

After wading through an awful lot of technical stuff, I found the solution in a very small reply.

Rather than playing with any boot tools or formatting hard drives, I simple did as the thread suggested - change my Primary Hard Drive from 'AUTO' to 'LBH' in the bios. Bingo, boot straight into XP.

Now have a dual boot MDK, XP system, hurray, I can play to my hearts content.

Bearing in mind the severity of this problem, I do think that MDK should make this problem very public, as the fix is very easy and does not involve any complex fdisk or any other command!

One very happy bunny

Thanks to whoever wrote the fix.

Cheers
Jools

webchem ,would this also work for 2 seperate hard drives triple booting.
I have Win Xp on Primary first drive.
And have Suse 9.1 on the second slave and want to add Mandrake 10. Official ,so I'll have 2 linux OS on the second drive, Ive already used Part Magic and created the second specific linux partition ,and both Linux Distro's share the swap Partition.
So by Primary Hard Drive from 'AUTO' to 'LBH' in the bios What will this do to a triple boot?
I havn't had a problem using suses grub ,dual booting and setting Win to default.

Thanks Aussie_Ocka

Thanks guys.

I installed in July, after much of this thread was underway.

I have come across the same problem, so its cheering to know its not my fault, that I'm not alone.

I will try tonight to change the BIOS settings, and see whether any of this advice really works for me.

Keep up the good work