Mannix

im running mandrake 10.1 community as my most used os on my desktop but occasionally i need to use WinXp and the rest on my family uses it. basically the problem is the bootloader (im using lilo) says that HAL.DLL is missing or corrupted (same thing happened when i tried grub) when i try to boot into windows it says it should be in <windows root>\system32 but there is no such directory (the root is dev/hda2) its supposed to be looking in <windows root>\windows\system32. is there any way to fix this without having to do reinstalls (i lost the WinXp disc.)? already tried modifying lilo.conf im out of ideas that i understand here's lilo.conf incase that is indeed the problem :

# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

default="linux"
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda2
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda

Skie

Did you repartition your drive so that a Linux partition went in front of the Windows partition? I've done some searching around and have seen this problem, but I haven't found any real fixes for it.

Can you post your boot.ini (from WinXP) and how your partitions are layed out?

dai

boot into the recovery console in xp and type
fixmbr
and press enter

Skie

I didn't suggest this yet simply because I've seen other people have additional problems after doing this. If what I'm thinking is true, then he needs to edit his boot.ini first. If the boot.ini is looking at the wrong partition, then he'll be unable to boot at all once he gets rid of LILO/GRUB.

dai

i got from a sticky on the knoppix forum

Skie

In most cases, this would work. But if the partition that Windows is on has changed (i.e. it used to be the first partition, but is now the second partition), then only Linux would know about this. Windows will still be looking at the first partition which I think is now a linux partition.

dai

i see what you mean
this is the link
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...a5a9e379f9e120

Mannix

where is boot.ini?

Skie

It's at C:\boot.ini

Mannix

here it is:

[boot loader]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Whistler Personal" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Skie

Can you also tell me how your partitions are laid out?

Mannix

ok then

the one shown first is hda5 i think its ext3 file system- 2.3 gigs
next is hda 6 linux swap- not sure
next it hda7 not sure the fs - 1.5 gigs
then hda2 the windows partition which is ntfs 51 gigs

Skie

I think we're still missing something. Can you look at /etc/fstab and paste the contents of that here?

Mannix

/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda2 /mnt/windows ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

Skie

I'm wondering what happened to hda1.

My suggestion would be to see if you can borrow someone's WinXP CD and run the recovery console to repair your Windows install. It appears as if your boot.ini is pointing to the right partition, so I don't think that'll be an issue.

Try these steps and see if it helps:

Attrib -H -R -S C:\Boot.ini
REN C:\Boot.ini C:\Boot.bad
BootCfg /Rebuild

fixboot

fixmbr

If you haven't done so yet, make sure you have a Linux boot disk so that you can still boot to Linux after the above steps. You can then try reloading LILO and see if that'll work for you this time.

Mannix

yeah i was thinking about just restoring the windows bootloader with my friends cd and putting lilo on a floppy as to avoid this problem