[ltp] windows won't boot on dual boot T40

[Ivarsson, Torbjorn (T)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas N. Arnold [mailto:arnold@ima.umn.edu]
> Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2003 9:36 PM
> 
> I have installed Debian Woody on a new IBM Thinkpad T40, keeping the
> delivered Windows XP around as an alternative, but I am unable to boot
> windows.
> 
> Lilo seems OK and booting into Linux succeeds, but when I try to 
> boot into Windows I get 
> 
>   Bad system disk,
>   Replace the disk and then press any key

IIRC, I had the same problem om my desktop. I don't think it's the MBR that is messed up since LILO starts.

LILO is my bootloader and starts first, I boot to Windows by default (no Windows bootloader). The problem I had was that the file (hidden in c:\) boot.ini didn't point to my XP partition. So I changed the file to point to the right partition. This is what it looks like now:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP" /fastdetect


Note: I don't remember exactly what everything means there, but originally it said 'partition(2)' instead of 'partition(1)'


Though I don't think you need to fix the MBR, you can use your installation-CD to go into "System Recovery mode" and use the command fixmbr to get back to the original Windows boot sequence (i.e., you won't be able to boot to Linux). Keep a copy of Knoppix or some other LiveCD distro handy to get into Linux and fix things.

HTH,
T.