Blinking cursor at failed boot

[Jon Danniken]

Basically all you are doing when you use Hiren's is omit loading the
HD's MBR...which is further evidence of an MBR problem.

Aye, it would certainly point in that direction, except putting grub on
the mbr will boot Linux just fine, but won't boot Windows (nor will
rescatux). I don't even get the error messages with the latter two
loaders, which would suggest a bad boot partition (but doesn't explain
why Hiren can boot it).

Why it cannot be fixed, I don't know.

Yeah, it's a pretty good puzzle. One thing points in one direction, and
something else in another, and around and around they go.

Jon

 

[philo]

Aye, it would certainly point in that direction, except putting grub on
the mbr will boot Linux just fine, but won't boot Windows (nor will
rescatux). I don't even get the error messages with the latter two
loaders, which would suggest a bad boot partition (but doesn't explain
why Hiren can boot it).


Yeah, it's a pretty good puzzle. One thing points in one direction, and
something else in another, and around and around they go.

Jon

If all else fails maybe a repair install would fix it?

 

[Paul]

Aye, it would certainly point in that direction, except putting grub on
the mbr will boot Linux just fine, but won't boot Windows (nor will
rescatux). I don't even get the error messages with the latter two
loaders, which would suggest a bad boot partition (but doesn't explain
why Hiren can boot it).


Yeah, it's a pretty good puzzle. One thing points in one direction, and
something else in another, and around and around they go.

Jon

Have you tried scanning the drive with a Kaspersky disc ?
It's listed as a 375MB download.

http://support.kaspersky.com/8092

That's a standalone boot CD, that does a scan for malware
while the OS is not running. It has a tick-box to scan the
MBR.

Your Hiren result would likely suggest what is potentially
corrupted, but perhaps the Kaspersky CD can find it.

Paul

 

[Jon Danniken]

Have you tried scanning the drive with a Kaspersky disc ?
It's listed as a 375MB download.

http://support.kaspersky.com/8092

That's a standalone boot CD, that does a scan for malware
while the OS is not running. It has a tick-box to scan the
MBR.

Your Hiren result would likely suggest what is potentially
corrupted, but perhaps the Kaspersky CD can find it.

Thanks Paul, that's a neat tool to keep on hand. Unfortunately
(fortunately?) it didn't find any bugs, but it did put up an interesting
piece of information just as it was starting.

Apologies for the poor quality of this, it only flashed on the screen
for a moment: http://i.imgur.com/Cgv7uMA.jpg

Maybe I have found a clue....

Jon

 

[Jon Danniken]

If all else fails maybe a repair install would fix it?

Aye, most likely so, hopefully anyway. I'd still like to figure it out
though.

Jon

 

[Paul]

Thanks Paul, that's a neat tool to keep on hand. Unfortunately
(fortunately?) it didn't find any bugs, but it did put up an interesting
piece of information just as it was starting.

Apologies for the poor quality of this, it only flashed on the screen
for a moment: http://i.imgur.com/Cgv7uMA.jpg

Maybe I have found a clue....

Jon

Something about the partition table entries themselves ?

I wish I could understand how that stuff all works,
because I've run into a situation before where something
broke like that, and I couldn't tell using PTEDIT32 or
other similar tools, exactly what was broken.

When your WinXP is running, try recording a screenshot of
PTEDIT32, when it displays that particular disk.

In this sample picture, is a Win2K disk. It's legacy aligned,
and all numbers on the right hand side should be divisible
by 63. Newer Linux and Vista/7/8 will use megabyte alignment.
Notice how my fake head count and sectors are 255 and 63
respectively, on a 500GB disk. Once you get above a certain
disk size, CHS geometry bitfields aren't wide enough to
properly represent the size, so fake "max" values are
substituted. Modern stuff knows it should use LBA when
seeing bogus CHS numbers. The stuff on the right is LBA related.

http://i41.tinypic.com/16kxrb9.gif

See what you disk looks like, with this (free) tool. For
the latest OSes, you would select "Run as administrator" to
avoid getting an error 5. It might just work by clicking
it in WinXP (after you unzip it of course).

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

In addition to that definition, it should be noted that
the virtual file system size can be smaller than the
physical size declared in that table. One user tried to
shrink a partition using Disk Management in a modern
OS, the virtual portion shrank but the physical definition
did not. Half the disk was "wasted", because of that bug.
Linux is king at doing that sort of thing, as for
some reason (on purpose), users are allowed to have
unaligned usage (virtual smaller than physical).
When a fraction of a cluster is involved, it's normal
for the virtual file system definition (defined by the
file system header), to be smaller than the physical space.
A fraction of a cluster can't be used to hold data. I'm
referring to more gross errors, where the virtual file
system definition is only half the size of the physical
space as defined in the partition table.

I think your error is referring to the stuff PTEDIT32
displays. That's a guess.

If the virtual definition was bigger than the physical,
I expect the result would be more immediate. And permanent.

Paul

 

[Jon Danniken]

Something about the partition table entries themselves ?

I wish I could understand how that stuff all works,
because I've run into a situation before where something
broke like that, and I couldn't tell using PTEDIT32 or
other similar tools, exactly what was broken.

When your WinXP is running, try recording a screenshot of
PTEDIT32, when it displays that particular disk.

In this sample picture, is a Win2K disk. It's legacy aligned,
and all numbers on the right hand side should be divisible
by 63. Newer Linux and Vista/7/8 will use megabyte alignment.
Notice how my fake head count and sectors are 255 and 63
respectively, on a 500GB disk. Once you get above a certain
disk size, CHS geometry bitfields aren't wide enough to
properly represent the size, so fake "max" values are
substituted. Modern stuff knows it should use LBA when
seeing bogus CHS numbers. The stuff on the right is LBA related.

http://i41.tinypic.com/16kxrb9.gif

See what you disk looks like, with this (free) tool. For
the latest OSes, you would select "Run as administrator" to
avoid getting an error 5. It might just work by clicking
it in WinXP (after you unzip it of course).

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

Thanks Paul, neat tool (it did just run without trouble in XP). Here's
a shot of mine from XP, on the troublesome disk:
http://i.imgur.com/ORobvwu.jpg

I notice that none of my numbers in the right hand column are divisible
by 63, probably because I did modify the partitions with Gparted at one
time (I am pretty sure I didn't fiddle with them since the last time it
was working, though).

In addition to that definition, it should be noted that
the virtual file system size can be smaller than the
physical size declared in that table. One user tried to
shrink a partition using Disk Management in a modern
OS, the virtual portion shrank but the physical definition
did not. Half the disk was "wasted", because of that bug.
Linux is king at doing that sort of thing, as for
some reason (on purpose), users are allowed to have
unaligned usage (virtual smaller than physical).
When a fraction of a cluster is involved, it's normal
for the virtual file system definition (defined by the
file system header), to be smaller than the physical space.
A fraction of a cluster can't be used to hold data. I'm
referring to more gross errors, where the virtual file
system definition is only half the size of the physical
space as defined in the partition table.

I think your error is referring to the stuff PTEDIT32
displays. That's a guess.

If the virtual definition was bigger than the physical,
I expect the result would be more immediate. And permanent.

Gotcha, thanks Paul.

Jon

 

[Paul]

Thanks Paul, neat tool (it did just run without trouble in XP). Here's
a shot of mine from XP, on the troublesome disk:
http://i.imgur.com/ORobvwu.jpg

I notice that none of my numbers in the right hand column are divisible
by 63, probably because I did modify the partitions with Gparted at one
time (I am pretty sure I didn't fiddle with them since the last time it
was working, though).



Gotcha, thanks Paul.

Jon

Your partition table, is not in spatial order.
(Partition1, Partition4, Partition2, Partition3)

You have a partition 0x05. DOS 3.3+ Extended Partition.

https://web.archive.org/web/2013040...tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

Your first partition has a megabyte alignment, not a 63 alignment.

None of these are fatal. The 0x05 partition is a bit weird.

Your boot flag is set on the first partition.

*******

Now, a weird one, is the declaration at the top of that
picture, says 15505 cyl, 240 heads. 63 sectors.

Mine here is 60801, 255, 63.

And, I don't know what controls that. Whether it's an attempt
to factor the drive size, or what.

114470MB = 114470*1024*1024 = 120,030,494,720

In other words, a number selected to be just larger than 120GB

15505*240*63*512 = 120,031,027,200

Now, without plugging it in, I have a ST3120026A 120GB
drive, which is listed here as:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-lvm/2004-July/msg00044.html

hda: ST3120026A, ATA DISK drive
234441648 sectors
CHS=14593/255/63

Yours is 234434560 sectors, so it is different.

On this page...

http://forum.s-t-d.org/viewtopic.php?id=1954

ST3120023A
234441648 sectors
CHS=15505/240/63

So the alternative values, aren't so out of the ordinary.

There's an explanation here. It seems to suggest
the drive reports this information, but what
puts the information there ? How does it know to
use a fake value of 240 or 255 ? A drive with
four platters would have 8 physical heads, so that
number has no physical significance.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/drive-geometry-error-t434220.html

Paul

 

[Jon Danniken]

Your partition table, is not in spatial order.
(Partition1, Partition4, Partition2, Partition3)

You have a partition 0x05. DOS 3.3+ Extended Partition.

https://web.archive.org/web/2013040...tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html


Your first partition has a megabyte alignment, not a 63 alignment.

None of these are fatal. The 0x05 partition is a bit weird.

Your boot flag is set on the first partition.

Yeah, the 0x05 is the extended; I usually end up putting that in right
after I install Windows, if I know I'm going to be using it and/or have
an immediate use for it. In this case I did, as I wanted to put 2GB
partition at the back end of the drive for all of the particular drivers
needed by Windows (this being a laptop). My logic was that if I needed
to reinstall Windows, I wouldn't have to transfer them from my main
machine, and also as a backup of same (who knows how long the
manufacturer is going to keep them available).

Now, a weird one, is the declaration at the top of that
picture, says 15505 cyl, 240 heads. 63 sectors.

Mine here is 60801, 255, 63.

And, I don't know what controls that. Whether it's an attempt
to factor the drive size, or what.

114470MB = 114470*1024*1024 = 120,030,494,720

In other words, a number selected to be just larger than 120GB

15505*240*63*512 = 120,031,027,200

Now, without plugging it in, I have a ST3120026A 120GB
drive, which is listed here as:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-lvm/2004-July/msg00044.html

hda: ST3120026A, ATA DISK drive
234441648 sectors
CHS=14593/255/63

Yours is 234434560 sectors, so it is different.

On this page...

http://forum.s-t-d.org/viewtopic.php?id=1954

ST3120023A
234441648 sectors
CHS=15505/240/63

So the alternative values, aren't so out of the ordinary.

There's an explanation here. It seems to suggest
the drive reports this information, but what
puts the information there ? How does it know to
use a fake value of 240 or 255 ? A drive with
four platters would have 8 physical heads, so that
number has no physical significance.

http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/drive-geometry-error-t434220.html

Thanks Paul, that's a good read. I was hoping something might jump out
as being out of place, but that's the breaks.

Jon

 

[Ben Myers]

Hi Ben, and thanks. I gave that a shot, but still no joy. I actually
did it the other way, too (fixmbr, fixboot, fixmbr) just for fun.

Jon

Try using the "map" command. Both fixboot and fixmbr can take parameters
and map will allow you to repair the correct disk and drive.

Ben