G
Guest
Hello.
I have been assigned to fix this computer at my work. It is a new computer
we are making that will contain 4 OSs; Red Hat 5 Enterprise Linux, Windows
Vista Business, Windows XP and Windows 2000. The OS to boot up is selected by
using Grub. The hard drive is partitioned into 6 partitions. Xp is located on
the 0 partition, Vista on 1, Win2000 on 2, Red hat on 4. IT installed all the
software but now there is a problem so they threw it at me, the new intern...
Red Hat, Vista and Xp all worked fine and boot up correctly. But once
Windows 2000 was installed XP no longer works. Now all the OSs installed work
except for Windows Xp. Through my two day online research I discovered that
you should install Window OS in order of oldest to newest (2000 then XP then
Vista). It seems IT did not know about this which is why we now have this
problem.
Grub reports an invalid device when it tries to boot up Widows XP (the grub
commands are correct). We figure the boot sector or the MBR was overwritten
by Window2000's. So I need to fix this. But the biggest problem is the
Windows XP CD fails to boot from the BIOS. This CD has been used on other
systems and successfully boots from BIOS and opens the recovery console. Also
other boot CDs work on this system, only the Windows XP boot CD fails. On
this system the BIOS sees the CD and starts it. I get the message “Checking
hardware integrity†or something similar. After a few seconds this message
disappears and the computer just sits there at a blank screen. The CD Rom
stops and nothing runs.
I can not repair/install anything within the XP partition because I can not
access the recovery console or installation setup. I did boot up from a Linux
System Rescue CD and ran TestDisk. It checked the boot sector and its backup
and reported that they were the same. I listed out the contents of the
partition and I did see all the files of the windows installation.
But I may have made things worse. Note all these problems were already
occurring before this. In TestDisk it asked to check/repair the MBR. I said
yes thinking it would check and leave it alone if it was fine. It seems it
rewrote the MBR and now TestDisk can not see the files in the XP partition. I
think all I need to do is get the recovery console and run chkdisk but as
stated above I still can not get the XP CD to boot. I tried again after I
'repaired' the MBR and the same problems still exist.
So I need help in figuring out why the XP CD fails to boot. Is there a way
to fix this while leaving the other partitions of the hard drive alone?
Any help is appreciated.
I have been assigned to fix this computer at my work. It is a new computer
we are making that will contain 4 OSs; Red Hat 5 Enterprise Linux, Windows
Vista Business, Windows XP and Windows 2000. The OS to boot up is selected by
using Grub. The hard drive is partitioned into 6 partitions. Xp is located on
the 0 partition, Vista on 1, Win2000 on 2, Red hat on 4. IT installed all the
software but now there is a problem so they threw it at me, the new intern...
Red Hat, Vista and Xp all worked fine and boot up correctly. But once
Windows 2000 was installed XP no longer works. Now all the OSs installed work
except for Windows Xp. Through my two day online research I discovered that
you should install Window OS in order of oldest to newest (2000 then XP then
Vista). It seems IT did not know about this which is why we now have this
problem.
Grub reports an invalid device when it tries to boot up Widows XP (the grub
commands are correct). We figure the boot sector or the MBR was overwritten
by Window2000's. So I need to fix this. But the biggest problem is the
Windows XP CD fails to boot from the BIOS. This CD has been used on other
systems and successfully boots from BIOS and opens the recovery console. Also
other boot CDs work on this system, only the Windows XP boot CD fails. On
this system the BIOS sees the CD and starts it. I get the message “Checking
hardware integrity†or something similar. After a few seconds this message
disappears and the computer just sits there at a blank screen. The CD Rom
stops and nothing runs.
I can not repair/install anything within the XP partition because I can not
access the recovery console or installation setup. I did boot up from a Linux
System Rescue CD and ran TestDisk. It checked the boot sector and its backup
and reported that they were the same. I listed out the contents of the
partition and I did see all the files of the windows installation.
But I may have made things worse. Note all these problems were already
occurring before this. In TestDisk it asked to check/repair the MBR. I said
yes thinking it would check and leave it alone if it was fine. It seems it
rewrote the MBR and now TestDisk can not see the files in the XP partition. I
think all I need to do is get the recovery console and run chkdisk but as
stated above I still can not get the XP CD to boot. I tried again after I
'repaired' the MBR and the same problems still exist.
So I need help in figuring out why the XP CD fails to boot. Is there a way
to fix this while leaving the other partitions of the hard drive alone?
Any help is appreciated.