On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 01:14:22 +0200, Bart Vantieghem wrote:

> So my question is, can someone tell me what to do? I don't want to
> reinstall my computer again, just to work with windows for only a few
> months...
>
> Some information:
>
> Partition table:
>
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 1 2 16033+ de Dell Utility
> /dev/hda2 3 8 48195 83 Linux
> /dev/hda3 * 9 859 6835657+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/hda4 860 3648 22402642+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/hda5 860 2453 12803773+ b Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda6 2454 3577 9028498+ 83 Linux
> /dev/hda7 3578 3648 570276 82 Linux swap

Perhaps I'm being too obvious, but doesn't Windows still require itself to
be on the primary partition of the primary drive, i.e. /dev/hda1?

Forgive me if I'm wrong (I still use Win98 to play games with, so I could
well be), but it's the only thing that occurs to me.

~Serzen

No, XP can be anywhere you want it. However, it does use part of the C
partition to store it's bootloader files.

Serzen wrote:

> On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 01:14:22 +0200, Bart Vantieghem wrote:
>
> Perhaps I'm being too obvious, but doesn't Windows still require itself to
> be on the primary partition of the primary drive, i.e. /dev/hda1?
>
> Forgive me if I'm wrong (I still use Win98 to play games with, so I could
> well be), but it's the only thing that occurs to me.
>
> ~Serzen

--
Brett I. Holcomb
brettholcomb@R777charter.net
AKA Grunt <><
Registered Linux User #188143
Remove R777 to email

Brett Holcomb <brettholcomb@charter.net> writes:

> No, XP can be anywhere you want it. However, it does use part of the C
> partition to store it's bootloader files.

I seems to recall that the C: drive *does* need to be a primary partition.
Then Windows can go in any other partition you want.

On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 02:23:36 +0200, Bart Vantieghem wrote:

> the "#" wasn't a typo. I remove the character, but that didn't solve my
> problem. When I select the WinXP option from grub, I (briefly) see the 3
> commands grub tries to execute and then it displays the grub-menu again.

From that, it's possible GRUB got installed onto the Windows partition, so
the MBR GRUB is booting into the Windows GRUB. I'm not sure how exactly
you'd undo that. Either the Recovery console might have something, or
perhaps GRUB made backups when it installed.

Regarding the Windows data, can you mount the partition under Linux?

--
Tom Felker, <tcfelker@mtco.com>
<http://vlevel.sourceforge.net> - Stop fiddling with the volume knob.

Times change, the mammals get smarter, and the dinosaurs turn into birds or die.