Partitioning Software with Vista

[Moira]

I've got severe problems now with the laptop - you were right when you were worried about the boot manager. Now, even though I haven't touched either Vista or XP, I'm getting an error that NTLDR is missing, which is serious iirc.

So I can't post a screen shot, sorry - I can't get into my laptop any help would be appreciated!

[gore]

This is one of those times where the XP rescue system comes in handy

I don't have Vista so I can't tell you exactly what to do there, but I know XP has a rescue system on the CD, so boot from one of them and repair it. You should be fine, the NTLDR is "NT Loader". It's kind of like Lilo or GRUB on Linux, except for Windows, and just loads OSs.

A quickie google on "NTLDR fix" should point you in the right direction.

And don't worry, I've screwed up MBRs and partitions far worse than this. Heh, had a Redhat install fail WHILE doing the lovely task of writing data to the MBR which left the machine in an "I'm not booting" state.

Luckily I sat down, installed a new copy of a different distro over it and it overwrote the MBR.

For Windows 98 SE, I once was going to tri-boot. I had it set up and was installing the third OS (FreeBSD) and it failed. Now normally that isn't a problem but at the time I couldn't get Linux to use my modem (This was back in early 2000 before it actually could recognize hardware like that by itself, so I was pretty well stuck), when I rebooted, FreeBSD would load but since only a base install was there, NO apps would load, and with Linux I could boot into it, but couldn't get to Windows as for some reason something happened during the install and it just woul not load.

So my boot screen showed Windows 98 SE, Linux, and FreeBSD, but only Linux booted into a useable state.

To make matters more interesting, I had JUST whiped my back ups, thinking I would do a fresh back up afterwards. (It was late, I was tired, wasn't thinking to good, so obviously that really bad idea of whiping back ups before doing this was stupid as it is, but thinking somehow nothing could go wrong and I'd do another back up later was somehow going to work was plain dumb).

I lost a lot of data but fixed it with Fdisk on a floppy, and just deleted every partition.

Another time, I screwed up the MBR so bad I had to edit it in hex.... I don't remember HOW I managed to do it, but the thing booted afterwards.

[nihil]

Hi Moira,

I have never run Vista on any of my machines, and I have never dual booted XP with anything, so this is just guesswork.

I am assuming that repairing XP and the MBR and/or replacing the NTLDR will get you back to where you were.

You might try this in XP not in Vista:

1. Defragment.
2. Try to repartition the XP partition and create a new, empty one.
3. See if Vista will expand into that.............it probably won't.
4. Delete the new partition, which should make it revert to free space on the drive?
5. Try to get Vista to expand into the freespace.......... it should do that?

Like I said, that is pure guesswork based on my experiences with older versions of Windows, and partitioning tools.

[RoadClosed]

It can't find the boot file at this point that doesn's mean data loss and this is good because you get to play with how windows boots. look on your backup and post boot.ini here.

[Moira]

nihil, I can't defrag because I can't get past "NTLDR is missing". And Vista wasn't expanding into any free space when I tried earlier. I want to try the partitioning software I got, but I haven't been able to install it on the laptop yet.

I'm going to put the Vista disc in and try fixmbr or the recovery tools on that - it's already once rescued an install. If that doesn't work I'll have to have a rethink. I was also wondering whether to put Ubuntu on the laptop with Vista as a more interesting dual boot than XP/Vista. I'm downloading feisty fawn as a start. I found dual booting linux and windows worked better when I installed linux first, otherwise the boot loader just doesn't give me two options. However I don't much fancy wiping my vista partition.

Edit RoadClosed, I presume you mean from the XP backup since Vista doesn't do boot.ini?

Here's the boot.ini file from my backup acronis image of the XP partition.

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

[nihil]

Hi Moira,

I meant when you got it working again

You say that Vista wouldnt expand into free space. Was this "true" free space or was it partitioned but empty?

[Moira]

No, it was unaollocated. And I'm currently trying fixmbr, but each windows install I choose, the xp disc is telling me the administrator password is wrong, which makes no sense because I know the password I'd have used. All I can do after this is reinstall then restore to a backup image.

If I have to do that, I fancy installing Ubuntu - however, if a repair install of Vista or XP would work then I'd go with that for now.

What do you mean when I get it working again? I'm never going to get it working again

[nihil]

C'mon Moira,

What do you mean when I get it working again? I'm never going to get it working again

Less of the defeatist talk, if Microsoft invented it then it can't be that difficult?

What you say about the unallocated space is both interesting and surprising. I could understand a reluctance to expand into another existing partition (just about), but not allowing expansion into unallocated space is very strange

[Moira]

The wy I understand it is if XP is ever upgraded to dynamic disks partition magic cannot work because of either licensing or they haven't figured the format. No expert just guessing. So either you upgraded them, they shipped that way or Vista did it. Since you have a backup go for it using Vista.

The disks on here are not dynamic - they're basic. I got a warning message when I was about to make a change on the laptop just now to some unallocated space that if I made the disks dynamic I could only boot from the current operating system or something. There's a column in disk management that says basic and that's what gets changed to dynamic if your disks change (I think).

I'm still in a mess with this laptop. I installed ubuntu which was fine, but by god, no wonder people don't use linux, they don't exactly help you, do they? Going to install a network printer, there's a quick box that comes up with an example of the format used to connect to the printer and when that disappears you're left with no help at all! I know \\server\printer from windows, but I don't know how it's done in linux and you can't guess that sort of thing! No, I'm not surprised ubuntu hasn't been the unqualified success in pre-built machines that some people expected it to be.

Anyway, I'm getting side tracked. After installing ubuntu, I had to reinstall Vista and I'm now trying to partition the disk. As I have 4 primary partitions already, there's 11 gig space that the partitioner won't do anything with! I fail when I try to make one of the primary partitions logical (it needs more space apparently). I've got this number because I had to make a disk for the root file system in ubuntu and some swap space. That made 4 with vista and ubuntu. However, I'm not getting the option to boot into ubuntu when I switch the computer on now, ie there's no boot loader of any sort. I might just ditch ubuntu, get vista installed and think about a second OS later I'm so, so tired.

[RoadClosed]

Earlier I was going to try and get XP to boot by maybe tweaking the boot.ini. Then you could look at disk manager and see whats up with the vista partition. I would bet though if you booted to the DVD and ran repair it would have at least fix the boot issue. Even without a repair disk. It's worked for me a few times already.

But re-installing is probably what I would have done by now.

//EDIT the boot loader would have to be able to recognize how vista boots and it would need a small partition at the front of the disk I would think. I don't think any linux loaders recognize Vista. I just looked up an article. The NTFS system in Vista IS NOT THE SAME AS XP, that is why nothing works right now. This has a foce dual boot workaround

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about78184.html