Fix for the XP dual boot problem

[shmuel siegel]

On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 00:22, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> The problem is that there is no "wrong geometry".  For quite a while
> these "geometries" are just inventions and illusions.  Many years
> ago hard disks indeed had all these head and cylinder geometries,
> physical ones, but this is a bygone era.  The trouble here is that
> here XP invents one geometry and your kernel another and XP refuses
> to work with what it decided it likes.  Linux kernel is more
> forgiving than that and anaconda should just read what an existing
> partition table said and do not bother with any alerts.

> Strictly speaking the bug is on an XP side but you are not likely
> fare that well pursuing that.
> 
>    Michal
> 
Assuming that win2k behaves the same as XP then I should be having
trouble seeing my partitions on my second drive, but I don't. Since I am
not booting off of that drive, the problem is more likely the boot
loader, which I am not testing, than XP itself.
Additionally, partition magic has detected that the geometry has changed
so the geometry information was on the disk in the place that linux/grub
changed it. Would you call it a bug in XP for not handling inconsistent
information. After all it was apparently linux/grub that made it
inconsistent.