Re: Sarge Test Candidate 1 broke WinXP on my triple-boot i386
Quoting Franz Amador (fgamador@yahoo.com):
> Thanks for the reply. I figured out what happened.
> The Debian installer changed the partition number of
> my XP partition, I think by changing it from a primary
> partition to a logical partition.
>
> After a lot of Googling, I learned that the NT boot
> loader is a program named ntldr in my Win98 C:\ that
> is configured by a (hidden) text file (thank God)
> named boot.ini also in C:\. I edited boot.ini so that
> instead of looking for WinXP in partition 2, it now
> looks for it in partition 3, and XP boots fine.
>
> So, the question now is, why did partitioning move my
> XP partition when all I asked it to do was delete my
> Mandrake partitions and create Debian partitions in
> their stead?
Because you probably asked for the creation of 2 partitions while
there was only one before. It is then logical that the partition
numbering is then changed. Or, more generally speaking, the number of
Linux partition after Debian install was different from the number of
Linux partitions before.
What was before partition number 2 is now partition number 3. Or 4, or
1, or whatever...
As boot.ini relies on the partition numbering scheme for naming
partitions, it becomes logical that the NT boot loader is confused.
The same would happen with another Linux installation if this another
install uses several partitions-->its /etc/fstab could need to be
changed if the number of partition changes.
In your case, there is no solution rather than manual fixing after the
installation. Any solution would involve changing the boot.ini file
which is certainly *not* to be done.
I don't really understand why you ask your NT boot loader to load
another Windows flavour. Why not just leave this to GRUB also? Using
two boot loaders simultaneously highly increases the probability of
some mess happening..:-)
>
> Another question: I tried reinstalling Debian, and now
> the GRUB installer does not notice Windows and so does
> not create a boot-menu option for it. I aborted the
> installation because that gave me the willies.
*that* is strange as os-prober should still have found the NT
partition.
This is not really dangerous as you always have the possibility of
going to GRUB command line and manually boot any partition you
want. However, I may understand you may be scared by this if you're
not used to GRUB. I was so the first time I used it...and now I'm a
happy GRUB user..:-)
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