Dual boot FC2T2 and WinXP?

[Vincent]

On Sat, 2004-04-03 at 23:29, Brian Bober wrote:
> On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 16:21:39 -0800 Vincent <pros-n-cons at bak.rr.com>
> > 
> > My setup came across the same problem as most here noted. FC2-t2
> > chewed up my win XP. First I tried fooling around with grub's parameters
> > snip
> >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > /dev/hda1   *           1       40641    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
> 
> I might be able to help you...
> 
> Although I never think dual-booting is a good idea, at least it looks like you
> were smart enough to do one OS per disk. Next time you might wanna use VMWare
> instead of dual-booting like that. You can use VMWare on the second disk from
> within Windows, and it'll stop Linux from messing with the first one. You are
> probably best off, though, buying an old used system off Ebay to install Fedora
> on (and it'll probably cost about the same as VMWare). Dual booting is just a
> bad idea. I used to dual boot Win95 and Slackware when I was a teenager. Two
> systems is just so much better. It also means you can never really run a
> web-server if you dual boot. You might wanna check out VMWare if you want only
> one system. Its very nice.
> 
Agreed, I just always figured if i don't touch hda everything will be
fine. I guess not.

> Three options:
> 
> 1) I have a tool I wrote that might be of assistance to you that allows you to
> fix your MBR so its the Windows XP MBR again, but since I installed Fedora on a
> new 250GB hard disk, I'll have to go fetch them off the old disk. If you want
> it, I can grab it for you off the old disk. If you don't have a windows system
> handy, hopefully it works in Wine or I could try porting it to Linux for you.
> That might take some time and a reinstallation of VMWare. Use my tools at your
> own risk. If you want them, then email me.
> 
Tempting but i'll pass and do things the hard way, A lesson is to be
learned somewhere in this mess. (other than stop duel booting and using
test releases)

> 2) You can use wine possibly to run the .exe files for the boot disks, and
> hopefully it'll work as long as its only to extract data and not write the
> disk.
> 
> 3) Your other option is to buy a cheapo used 10GB disk or something, install
> Windows XP on it, and then snatch the stuff from the partition on the other
> disk (hopefully), then reinstall the OS on the original disk.
> 
I have a 6 gig laying around but the data that needs to be backed up
is about 25 gigs, So far i was able to mount the vfat partitions so
I'll pack what DVD's i have left with that and see if recompiling the
kernel with NTFS will work for C:\ 

> Here's the rub, though... Only method 1, you will be able to boot back into
> Windows as if nothing ever happened, and that's ONLY if only the XP MBR has
> been replaced by Linux's, but everything else is OK. Hopefully your partition
> table is intact, or you'll have to know where the NTFS partition is. I will
> eventually possibly add the ability to search for the NTFS partition on the
> disk, but I haven't yet. It looks like your partition table is still intact.
> The other two methods will mean you'll have to install Windows over its current
> installation, get your data backed up, then reinstall it with a fresh reformat.
> 
> > I tried booting from windows CD and it just hangs after "detecting hardware"
> 
> Are you sure that you don't have some hardware issue that'd affect any OS on
> the system?
You're right something is up with my hardware, its a brand new system i
put together by pieces. And had to do a number of workarounds to install
windows the first time. You can see why i'm not looking forward to
playing darts in my BIOS again.

I knew this would happen I just needed to make sure there was nothing
else to try.

I appreciate the help.