Bug#258880: Fix for unbootable windows systems after install

[stuarta@pasiphae.fsnet.co.uk (Stuart Auchterlonie)]

Hello all,

I've been building a new system with winXP and Debian.
Layout is as follows

hda = 40G ide, 39g winXP, 1g raid partition (1/2 of / raid)
sda = 160G SATA, 1g raid, 159g lvm

I've installed windoze first, then debian afterwards.
After completing the debian install I tried to reboot
to windoze and it hung after grub jumped to windoze.

It turns out I've been bitten by the same bug as everyone else.
When parted creates the 1g partition on hda it changes the geometry
of the drive that the table is written with, dropping the number of
heads down from 255 to something lower.

After much searching on the net I found the following page which
describes the exact problem in detail and provides a workaround
so that we can all boot our systems again.

http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/


Regards,
Stuart Auchterlonie