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Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:38:53 -0400
From: Tony Nelson <tonynelson(a)georgeanelson.com>
At 11:37 AM -0400 8/31/05, Michael Wiktowy wrote:
>>Greetings all,
>>I have an odd problem happening that I have experienced on a Fedora Core
>>install in the past and in recent history also.
>>
>>Background:
>>When I try to set up a dual-boot w2k+linux system (resizing w2k
>>partition and filesystem, verifying w2k is happy after resize,
>>installing FC), w2k is not happy sometimes on some systems. It will
>>start to boot, switch to its more graphical starting windows boot
>>screen, get halfway though and then blue screen [1] with a
>>BOOT_INACCESSABLE error advising me to do a chkdsk /f and giving me no
>>means of doing so. The recovery console on the install media doesn't
>>seem to do the trick on this system (Dell GX280 with a SATA drive)
>>either. [2]
>>
>>Specifics:
>>I have narrowed down the problem to w2k not liking me simply adding
>>extra partitions to the disk.[3] I boot to Knoppix and use fdisk to add
>>some partitions (to try avoid the "anaconda changing the CHS values in
>>the partition table with a buggy bios" issue) but as soon as I do, w2k
>>becomes unhappy. I can subsequently remove the partitions and w2k is
>>content again and boots normally.[4]
>
>
...
You don't say if you have any Extended partitions on the drive. If you do,
your extended partitions will get their number bumped up when you add new
Basic partitions, so you will need to renumber them in boot.ini. Umm, by
using FIXBOOT in the Recovery Console? (You say Recovery Console doesn't
work, but you don't say what you tried in it. On its own, it just sits
there and does nothing.)
To add more detail:
- no extended partitions ... just two primary ones
- the exact error is *** STOP 0x0000007B
(0x81826B10,0xC000014F,0x00000000,0x00000000)
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE ... followed by some chkdsk /f verbage.
- I just reproduced it by simply adding a primary linux type
partition taking up the rest of the space on disk and got rid of it by
deleting that partition
-w2k is on the first (and only) primary partition that is 150GB big and
the drive is 250 GB total and is SATA. I don't know if it is supposed to
but w2k does not report any free disk space after its partition when you
go into the disk management dialog.
I went through all the steps again so that they are fresh in my mind
- after adding the second primary partition, I booted to the recovery
console and tried:
- CHKDSK
- gives the informative and useful "The volume appears to
contain one or more unrecoverable problems." when the second primary
partition is present
(recovery) - removing the second partition causes w2k to boot
normally
- FIXMBR
- complains that the computer has a non-standard or invalid
master boot record and warns of dire consequences
- ... going through with it anyways has no effect other writing
a new MBR to \Device\Harddisk0\Partition0
- which clobbers grub if was there and the blue screen persists
with the first hex number after the bracket changing to 0x81877CB0
(recovery) - but after the second partition is removed, w2k
boots normally.
- FIXBOOT
- warned that the bootsector was corrupt after thinking that
the file system on the startup partition is unknown.
- It then checked the file system type and detected that it was
an NTFS system and wrote a new bootsector.
- This had no effect other than hooping the system such that it
wouldn't even begin to start the ntloader (A disk read error occured ...
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart)
- looking at the output of sfdisk -d /dev/sda ... it appears to
have seriously pooched the partition table also making 4 overlapping
primary partitions
(recovery) - restoring the mbr (containing the 2 partitions)
from the backup image didn't make it work again but I got the blue
screen again (with a different hex number again like after the FIXMBR step)
(recovery) - removing the second primary partition caused w2k
to boot normally
So somehow w2k is getting seriously confused on my system ... turning on
/bootlog and /sos in w2k boot.ini and removing /fastdetect was not
illuminating.
I took dd snapshots at each step with Knoppix. Does anyone know of a
good hexeditor that I could view them in or ideally compare two binary
files?
My next step is to experiment with hidden partition types. If that works
I will file an RFE against anaconda to write more failsafe grub rules by
hiding the linux partitions.
Preliminary experiments would indicate that changing the partition to a
hidden type doesn't help. I am not sure if that is all the "hide"
command does in grub.
/Mike