On (31/03/06 20:05), Dave Witbrodt wrote: > To: debian-user@lists.debian.org > From: Dave Witbrodt <dawitbro@sbcglobal.net> > Subject: Re: Will wine|win4lin|VMWare save my XP bacon? > Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 20:05:47 -0500 > X-Spam-Status: No, score=-6.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=no > version=3.1.0 > > > >Here's the story, in more detail, for the archives. I rewrote the > >relevant stanza of /boot/grub/menu.lst to read <snip. For the backstory, search archives, http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/> > > > >Is this a great list, or what?! And particularly, thanks Dave! > > Glad to be of some help. And, _yes_, 'debian-user' is great, even > when it goes OT. (And I don't mean overtime... I mean stuff about > broccoli, etc.) > > I'm glad it worked out for you. I don't really understand what you > did: you said you changed 'menu.lst', rebooted, and found that WinXP > was working. Everything after that sounded a lot like you were doing > repairs using a WinXP CD, though. Is that true? I do not fully understand what happened. I was NOT using any repair CD; the only XP resources available were those on the partition I had copied via dd to /dev/hdb1 (D:, in Windows talk) from /dev/hda1 Remember, after I had copied my XP partition, I edited grub and then successfully booted into XP. It then found both C: and D:. At that point, I took back /dev/hda1 for Debian, found myself unable to get XP to boot, and finally wrote debian-user for help. My best UNconfident guess is that when I was finally able (thanks to using grub's "map" optionon your advice), XP sensed something was wrong and just decided to reinstall itself without asking permission. But just how that came about is a mystery to me still. > I any case, it sounds like you dodged the bullet this time. (Shall > we call you "Neo," or what? :) No, call me "Lucky" to have someone as knowledgeable as you to offer advice. > If you are getting Win XP to offer boot choices AFTER you boot to > Windows with GRUB, then you may get tired of it and want to > reconfigure WinXP so that it doesn't do that any more. I'm getting > off topic for a Debian list, but you are a Debian user so I guess we > can afford to give you some slack. You can go to > > Start -> Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance -> System > > from there choose > > Advanced -> Startup and Recovery: Settings > > Then look for: > > "To edit the startup options file manually, click edit" > > If you do this you may be in somewhat dangerous territory. I'm not > really sure what has happened with your machine -- it sounds like > Windows moved your previous system to a new "folder" and installed > itself into a fresh one. Normally, this file is used to select > different OSes on different partitions to boot from; it is the WinXP > equivalent of GRUB's 'menu.lst' file. It can also be used to setup > different boot configurations on the same partition. > You probably want to backup this file before you edit it. It is > usually here: > > C:\BOOT.INI > > To get at it you may have to alter its file attributes using ATTRIB > from the command prompt. > Now, if the lines in this file under "[operating systems]" indicate > different values for "rdisk()", then BOOT.INI is actually booting > different versions of WinXP from different partitions. > On the other hand, if the lines seem identical except for the > "folder" at the very end, then you have more than one version of WinXP > installed on the same partition. If that is the case, and you don't > want the choice of booting to your original WinXP and a new, clean > install, you can remove the line to the clean install... and you can > erase the folder that contains the clean install if you boot to your > original version of WinXP. A second install will just waste drive > space, and it may not recognize any of your installed programs anyway. I followed your advice, edited BOOT.INI (after backing it up) to my taste, and all is well. Thanks one more time. > My apologies to the rest of the 'debian-user' community who feel > that offering help regarding a competing OS is inappropriate. I do > not fear Microshaft and it's current near-monopoly over the OS market; > indeed, I have actually begun to feel sorry for it because it's demise > is as inevitable as it is appropriate. I also feel that by helping > newbies to multiboot until they're ready to make a permanent switch to > Debian (or some other Linux... or even joining the Hurd!) it makes > people feel like their welcome to join a community instead of some > sort of tribal feud between advocates of alternative bit-collections. > > > Dave W. I am the one who owes an apology to debian-user for soliciting help on the matter. But who else but us would be pushing Windows into dark unused corners on our hard-drives? Seriously, _of course_ there's a certain level of adolescent posturing that one needs to ignore on debian-user (and even on debian-devel). (Oops! Forget I said that, please?) But there are also many folks, like Dave Witbrodt and a good many others whose names are familiar to all, whose competence and kindness are unsurpassed. Truly, this is a community to treasure. -- JohnRChamplin@columbus.rr.com ==================================================== PGP key 1024D/99421A63 2005-01-05 EE51 79E9 F244 D734 A012 1CEC 7813 9FE9 9942 1A63 gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 99421A63
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