winblows is killing me

anon · Guest

I'm having major problems trying to set up a dual boot (gentoo/xp corporate) drive.

Here's what I did:

(100G hd)
booted to gentoo disk, ran fdisk:
1: 100M boot partition
2: 1G swap partition
3: 48.9G root partition
4: 50G NTFS partition
all partitions primary partitions

verified, everything looks normal

rebooted with xp corporate disk

tried to install on partition 4, error message saying there are too many partitions

delete partition 4, let xp create NTFS new partition out of remaining space, xp gives error saying that it cannot create more partitions, there are too many

screw it, ill put the gentoo disk back and reformat from scratch, now its trying to boot off the hard disk, but theres nothing to boot on, freezes

move cd drive up in boot order so that it will boot the gentoo disk

get an error loading the kernel, something along the lines of:

kernel panic: init= not found

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

If you have a spare Winblows 98 start-up disk lying around you could try to fdisk the harddisk that way. Then you could use the Gentoo CD to repartition. I think your problem was that XP needs to be on the first partition of the harddisk otherwise it won't do anything.

Hope this helps.
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therobot · Apprentice Joined: 07 Jun 2002 Posts: 256 Location: Canada

Install xp first, on the first partition, then install gentoo after. If you don't do that, you're in for a world of headaches.

jeff.buzzell · Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2002 11:37 pm Post subject:

therobot is correct.

windows needs to be installed on the first partition to make things work

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Not entirely. See here.
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anon · Guest

i dug up an old 98 disk but i cant make the hd unbootable even when i delete all the partitions it still tries to boot to it, then mysteriously jump over the cdrom directly to the network card. when i disable my cdrom or move it up in the boot order in bios gentoo gives the following error message:

Kernel panic: no init found. try sending the init= option to the kernel

this error makes no sense to me. my friend has the same motherboard as me (asus a7v333 and has had no problems). its not just gentoo either. i tried using my dad's redhat 7.1 disk just to see if it worked, it gave a kernel panic message: "i dont have a root and i want to cry"

so ive tried several commands in the boot loader, eg:

linux init=/sbin/init
linux init=/etc/init
linux init=/bin/sh
linux init=/dev/hdc/sbin/init
linux init=/dev/hdc/ext/init
linux init=/dev/hdc/bin/sh
linux init=s
linux init=1
linux init=3
linux init=0
linux init=6
linux init=single
linux init=q

i cant find any more possibilites. the last time the kernel loaded right was when the hard disk had no mbr. how do i completely clean sweep the disk and start from scratch? also, can someone tell me the location of init on the boot disk so i can pass it to the kernel, though i doubt this will solve the problem

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Have you upgraded your BIOS? Can you boot to the Gentoo install CD?
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anon · Guest

I think my bios is up to date, but ill have to check. I can get by gentoo cd to boot if i change the boot order so that the cd comes before the hd, but whenever I do that the I get a kernel panic message when i hit enter. So I cant load the kernel which means I cant do anything once i boot off the cd

kdh · n00b Joined: 18 Jul 2002 Posts: 13

Maybe the problem is the fact that all 4 partitions are primary. Although it is possible to have four primary partitions on the same harddisk, all the microsoft versions of fdisk I've tried only allowed for 1 primary and 1 extended partition (or so I seem to remember). Besides I've heard as well that windows (at least the earlier versions) likes to be on the first partition.

So I would do

1 prim
1 ext containing 3 logical drives

My first choice would be something like

prim 50gb ntfs
ext log1 100mb boot
ext log2 1gb swap
ext log3 ~50gb /

otherwise you could try out something like

prim 100mb boot
ext log1 1 gb swap
ext log2 ~50gb /
ext log3 50 gb ntfs

which is akin to the setup you propose.

Sequentious · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2002 1:52 am Post subject:

Instead of moving your cdrom boot priority up, can you try removing the hard drive from the boot list?

Just as a sidenote, my partition table is something like the following:
hda1 = windows
hda2 = /boot
(extended created -- using *nix fdisk, i specified id # 3 (following 1 and 2 above)
hda5 = swap
hda6 = /
hda7 = /home

That structure has been working for me for months.
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chris@cidesign.ca :: www.cidesign.ca/~chris/

Chickpea · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 846 Location: Vancouver WA

I am unclear whether or not you had XP installed previously or not and if you had installed Gentoo or only got to the partioning stage.

XP as with other flavors of windows likes to be first. This OS is the bully on the playground. Everyone else can play nice but not this fellow.

It sounds like your MBR is messed up. I know you say that you have deleted all of the partions but my suggestion is to get a Windows 98 disk and run the fdisk program and fdisk /mbr. this is will wipe out any boot loader on the system. You will need to install XP first. It is a pain but it will save you so much time in the long run.

I found an article on the web that gives some information on reformating your hard drive and installing XP. According to the article, XP can format and reinstall from the cd.

http://www.cyberwalker.net/columns/aug02/010802.html

I also suggest that you partion the amount of space you want for XP using the fdisk utility found on a Windows 98 startup disk, install XP. Then when you are ready to install Gentoo, you can put in the cd and use the fdisk program on the gentoo cd to partion the linux portion of the drive.

Something else of interest for you...I just remembered

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/linux/story/0,24330,3397093,00.html

good luck
Cat

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

This probably isn't the issue, but are the master/slave jumpers set correctly?
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Slougi · Guest

Boot of the w98 floppy and try "fdisk /mbr". This should solve it, it worked for me when I had a similar problem.

anon · Guest

i tried using "fdisk /mbr" and whatever this program is it seems to still be there. its called MBA, by lanworks/3com. it looks almost like a remote boot agent. i tried makeing the cdrom the primary master. that worked for a while and I could load the gentoo kernel from the cd just fine. the problem was fdisk said it couldn't write to /dev/hda. it says it detects no disklabel and is creating a default dos disktable, but when i try to write it to disk, it gives me an error and quits. i just bought a floppy drive so im going to see if i can partition my hard drive from there. does anyone know anything about this MBA program?

ps
thanks for all the help you've given so far

craftyc · Guru Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 443 Location: Behind You.

Try using Mandrakes partitioning utility. When I had trouble with my disk it was the one that rescued me. fdisk (DOS version) and Partition Magic didn't have the brains to see my disk properly.
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Chickpea · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 846 Location: Vancouver WA

are you using the dos fdisk or linux fdisk?

Also, did you have anything installed on this hard drive before?

I did a quick google search and this is something that was found
http://www.3com.com/en_US/lanworks/support_docs.html

Managed PC Boot Agent (MBA).

By chance do you have a integrated lan card on your machine or do you have a pci card?

anon · Guest

ok...i figured out one level of the bug. when i turned off the bios's virus scanning utility everything began functioning smoothly.

microsoft's retardation doesn't seem to be over however. its now failing when its trying to load diskcopy.dll. it does this with three different xp corporate cds and a legit xp home cd. i think perhaps theres something wrong with my memory or cdrom, i'll tell you all when i find out if my hardware has problems

thanks for all the help!

Chickpea · l33t Joined: 03 Jun 2002 Posts: 846 Location: Vancouver WA

Actually, I think it might have something to do with your NIC. While doing some searching on the web for the this mysterious MBA i found that it is a type of card that allows for remote booting and requires it's own image to boot. YOu may have to do make a custom kernel to begin the boot process. Which is probably why you are not able to boot the machine. Is it possible that you have the manuals and software for it somewhere. Maybe you can get the boot image it needs and perhaps be able to get the machine up and running.

If you can find the installation disk, perhaps you can also figure out how to remove this software from your hard drive or disable it in the bios and get a different NIC card.

C

STED · Guest

FYI:

W9x (and apparently XP) need to be on the first (and preferably only) primary partition.

Windows NT and W2k (which are not "toy" OSs) can be placed on any partition on your HD.

A suggestion for the original poster, drop XP and get yourself W2k instead, and you won't have mess around with where to install what (+ XP sucks anyway compaired to W2k)

KiLLaCaT · Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2002 7:19 am Post subject:

hi!

if i should have understood so far, every partition tool says,that there too much partitions. i think the only way to fix this, is to clrear the hole HD. if had this prob for several times.
you also said, that you cant boot from any device. i think thats because of a bad (or missing?) MBR. u can solve this prob w/ installing another HD as master. so u can boot from floppy and do fdisk.

jax

elmie · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 3:19 am Post subject:

lol, U are a goose mate..

U use grub is much more cooler.. and U can have your linux boot anyway U want, unlike LILO, which has to be in the 1024k area or it won't boot..

this is what mine looks like::
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
default 0
timeout 30
splashimage=(hd0,6)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

# Below need only for people who dual-boot
title=WindowsXP Pro
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

# Below need only for people who dual-boot
title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda9
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you probably know already if your have read the installation guide..
that U need to align where your linux partitions are, don't worry if U have to do it alot of times..

remember that in GRUB, it count stupid, like from 0,1,2,3,4,5..etc
where Grub 0 = Partition 1, Grub 1 = Partition 2 and so on..
so if your Linux boot partition is at 4, your will hav to put in GRUB as 3, just count one back..
If you don't know where your Partitions are, just type fdisk /dev/(your hard-drive) and press P and see where your linux and windows partitions are.. and write them down.. Press q to quit and nano -w /boot/grub/menu.lst again..
just remember to mount your boot drive!!