Error 12 after first install with XP - Too Late, Borked.....

[greyrider]

A happy little laptop running Win XP decided one day to dip it's toes in the world of Linux. 2010 version installed and boots up just fine, all working happily and all is well. Except.......opting to load Windows results in a refusal to mount the drive.
I've managed to get as far as changing boot names from HD0,0 to HD0,1 and now have an "Error 12" message instead.
Pass.
Fail.
Help!
It's not so much as there's any data I need rather that there's one or three heavyweight programs I still have to use in there so dual boot would be really helpful until I can swing fully over to Linux.
Any help appreciated........in words of one syllable only, OK?  

Fdisk output:

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf9462c03

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3965    31848831    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3966        7296    26756257+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            3966        3966        8001   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            3967        6696    21928693+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7            6697        7296     4819468+  83  Linux

[Ramchu]

USE your Live CD and Redo MBR

and/or http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,62786.msg508062.html#msg508062

[melodie]

Hi,

Let's make it simple. Try to edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst, and if you do not see a block of text containing this:

Code:

title windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

then add it at the end of the file, save, and reboot.

The other way is the  graphical mode, in PCC (control center) you go to boot section and reinstall Grub from there : while doing that, check what partitions Grub adds by itself to the list of Operating Systems to be booted, and if it doesn't add Windows, click on "Add" and manage to get the same block of text I just wrote above. (But the direct edition of the file is much easier to do and is perfecly safe).

To edit with gui editor:

in Kde, console user mode:

Code:

kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst

in other desktops

Code:

gksu <here choose an editor:mousepad, leafpad, scite, geany>/boot/grub/menu.lst

Once the change done save before closing the file.

[greyrider]

Done that.

Just been through the loop, again, and it appears I must have gone (very) wrong when resizing the drive, Windows now comes up with a blue screen and "Unmountable_boot_volume" and as it's a recovery disk only and the laptop doesn't have an XP CD.........
No worries, I'll wipe the lot, give it up to the gods and see if I can beg, borrow etc, disks to reinstall my programs - moved house and lost a box of stuff, stolen by the movers actually. That's an awful lot of set back regards work but hey,it was fun.
Thanks.

[scoundrel]

Done that.

Just been through the loop, again, and it appears I must have gone (very) wrong when resizing the drive, Windows now comes up with a blue screen and "Unmountable_boot_volume" and as it's a recovery disk only and the laptop doesn't have an XP CD.........
No worries, I'll wipe the lot, give it up to the gods and see if I can beg, borrow etc, disks to reinstall my programs - moved house and lost a box of stuff, stolen by the movers actually. That's an awful lot of set back regards work but hey,it was fun.
Thanks.

 

you can download the XP thing ... just make sure you get a real copy where you need to add your code thing