Currently I use a floppy to backup NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM, use attrib -h -r -s to make them non-hidden and rewritable.

That day, my windows 2000 crashed bu XP is ok,
to install windows 2000 after XP, a little trick is needed,
just boot from windows 2000 Disc, install on the partition separate from XP, after finishing, u r not able to boot into XP cause those files were replaced by windows 2000 and not able to boot XP, but the same file from XP is able to boot windows 2000, so, i just copy those files from my floppy to C:, reboot , test to boot into XP, OK!
To get back grub to dual boot with SUSE, i use the Autorepair of suse,
and now my PC is triple boot with windows 2000, XP and SUSE 10.0

GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I tried the whole routine....But still the same problem!

First booted with win98 floppy and ran fdisk /MBR
Then restarted with winXP cd, went into recovery mode, deleted the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files and replaced them with the ones in /i386 on cd.

Rebooted again with Suse 10.0 DVD, did automatic repair.

Rebooted again without cd/dvd, and message "NTLDR missing" appears again.

When I try to boot from Suse DVD and then select windows from the menu, windows still starts without any problem.

So, this didn't help me here

Anybody else with a possible solution? Otherwise I'll just get rid of linux and stick with good old windows and maybe try vmware.

The 'NTLDR missing' error usually occurs when the file is not found by the bootloader, rather than not being present.

Did you try swaping the drives in device.map? Maybe you should try this before giving up.

> Did you try swaping the drives in device.map?

this is true when configed with restore partition, at least all my HP machines do this. in windows management console, if you check disk management, you will see that c: for windows is actually the 2nd primary partition.

i believe there is a bootloader in the restore partition and windows is simply chained from there. i never find document on this though. swapping device.map worked for me 3 years a go, if i remembered correctly. i no longer have such a machine to test now, unfortunately.

you may need to do a
# fdisk /dev/hda
then x then f where f is to fix partition order. use m for list of options.

by doing this, you get correct partition order and then is propably no need for swap.

it really shouldn't, but take this as a challenge to have a linux system. it's more than worth it.

I just tried to edit the /boot/grub/device.map file. It used to look like this:
(hd1) /dev/hdb
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda

I changed it to:
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb
(fd0) /dev/fd0

Restarted again, looked at devices.map again...and it changed itself back to the old situation!

Then I tried to do the fdisk and change the partition order on /dev/hda.

Well, Linux really didn't like that. Here's some of my bootlog:

-----------------------------
<6>Adding 1052248k swap on /dev/hdb2. Priority:-1 extents:1
<6>device-mapper: 4.4.0-ioctl (2005-01-12) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
<6>NTFS driver 2.1.23 [Flags: R/W MODULE].
<3>NTFS-fs warning (device hda1): is_boot_sector_ntfs(): Invalid boot sector checksum.
<3>NTFS-fs error (device hda1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Primary boot sector is invalid.
<3>NTFS-fs error (device hda1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Mount option errors=recover not used. Aborting without trying to recover.
<3>NTFS-fs error (device hda1): ntfs_fill_super(): Not an NTFS volume.
<6>NTFS volume version 3.1.
Kernel logging (ksyslog) stopped.
Kernel log daemon terminating.

devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620,gid=5)
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

/dev/hdb1 on /windows/D type ntfs (ro,noexec,nosuid,nodev,gid=100,umask=0002,nls=utf8)
failedSetting up hostname 'linux'done
Setting up loopback interface lo
lo IP address: 127.0.0.1/8
done
-----------------------------


And now I can't even access the C drive from within linux.

And some more problems.....

When I now choose Windows in the menu after booting with the Suse DVD, it will get me into system recovery mode (that's the wrong partition!).
When I choose the recovery mode in the menu after booting with the Suse DVD, it will get me this:
" Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file."

So I thought I should try reorganizing the partition order again with fdisk /dev/hda, but then it tells me it doesn't need to do anything, the order is ok!

When I execute fdisk -l it gives (in dutch):
Schijf /dev/hda: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 koppen, 63 sectoren/spoor, 14946 cylinders
Eenheden = cylinders van 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Apparaat Boot Start Einde Blokken Id Systeem
/dev/hda1 1 337 2706921 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/hda2 * 338 14946 117346792+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Schijf /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 koppen, 63 sectoren/spoor, 9729 cylinders
Eenheden = cylinders van 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Apparaat Boot Start Einde Blokken Id Systeem
/dev/hdb1 * 1 6374 51199123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 6375 6505 1052257+ 82 Linux-swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb3 6506 9729 25896780 83 Linux


So, I guess I made things worse cause now I can't get windows to work anymore. How can I undo my partition ordering??

UPDATE:
got windows working again by doing a bootcfg /REBUILD in recovery mode.
It seemed my boot.ini was changed by my good old Suse pal!

Robert,
i am not sure why your system behaves in such a way?
Is it possible you backup your files (need DVD burner, I just have it , worthy investment, CDR is too small to hold my data ) and reformat your HDD into blank partition,
install XP followed by suse?

Off course I can reformat the whole thing and start all over again. But I really don't want to if I can help it.

I also tried fixboot and fixmbr from xp recovery console, to try to start windows normally again and to get rid of linux......but it didn't help. The NTLDR message still appears.

But...this is weird I think: When I have my xp cd in the dvd drive and do NOT boot from the cd (it tells me to press a key if I want to boot from cd, and I don't)...then windows will start!!!
So, no booting from cd, but still working. I take out the xp cd and boot again, but then the NTLDR missing message appears again.

I guess I will have to format and reinstall xp after all (thanks to suse)

Do you mean you want to give up SUSE?
Don't, try again, if your hardware is ok, it will work well with XP.
I have triple boot, no problem.

No, I don't think I'll give up on suse. I need Linux to install oracle db anyways. But I thought Linux developed and had grown into a user friendly environment over the years and that it should be a good alternative for Windows XP. But I can not see any of my non-IT friends/relatives installing linux and being happy with it (not even taking into account the problems which it can cause when trying to install this as a 2nd o.s.). Alternative is to use VMWare, but I haven't been able to grab a copy of that (yet).

the following has some explanation on this 'restore partition', to my understanding. there is no solution in the thread, however.

http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/pi...st/028573.html

> In my experience, Rescue & Restore refused to work properly when I had
> GRUB written to the MBR. If NTLDR (the Windows bootloader) is on the MBR,
> Rescue & Restore works fine. I'm assuming that you probably have GRUB as
> your bootloader, and it's on the MBR. If you can put NTLDR back on the
> MBR, I'm guessing your Rescue & Restore will work fine. Unfortunately, that
> leads to the question of: how do I boot Linux?

your 'ntldr is missing' error mesage confirms that it's read from MBR but not from c:\ which is the case when there is no restore partition.

i suggest you to disable restore partition, that is, to straight out your NTLDR, the nt bootloader of its own. grub then will like it. (i am sorry that i wasn't able to test this out thus no detailed steps).

in other words, make windows run on its own first then install suse as 2nd os. this is to the same effect of reformating your disk, install windows then install suse.

Normally what i do is, boot with maxtor bootdisk that has an application to format your HDD plus doing some other corrections if there is any defect of your disk structure.
Then, I boot with my XP CD, create partition with 3GB first, choose NTFS, so that the formating is fast.
After installation, I use partition magic to resize the XP partition to be larger, 80% of the disk, keep a remaining of 20% as unpartition.
Then, boot with Linux CD/DVD, in this case, SUSE10.0, it will autodetect your existing OS and make use of the free space to create a SWAP and / boot partition. Proceed with installation, things will be OK.

fdisk is a dos utility

boot off a win xp os cd.

choose recovery console

try these commands

fixboot
fixmbr

see if that helps, NTLDR is in the boot strap, and fxiboot should rewrite the boot sector with a fresh one

hope that helps

tlarkin: I tried the fixboot and fixmbr already, it didn't help.

Thanks to all for your time to answer my questions. When I have time I will try to get rid of the recovery partition and see what happens then. If I still can't get it to work I will reinstall windows xp and suse afterwards.

First things first, it's time to backup my C drive just in case...

perhaps your problemis even file system related.

for grins

boot into recovery console off win xp cd and run this command

chkdsk /r

it may take a while but see what happens

Or do an overlay of the OS. Hit after hitting F8 to agree to run install there should be a recovery option (not recovery console) but an option to recover (or repair) a bad installation of windows.

I have done this when I got some spyware on a win2k3 server and it worked for me