[wrestler]

All the more reason to explore other options.

Tsk tsk, all this is speaking out of my soul (see my posting of April) - but perhaps we'll both go to HELL for being disobedient. BIG BROTHER won't like it.
Klaus

[augie]

I confess to being a heavy multitasker, but Vista is surprisingly slow, unstable, disk intensive and memory hungry on all of the platforms I've seen (not just mine, where I push it to the limit).

Vista has been designed to use more RAM than XP with the philosophy of unused RAM is wasted RAM. Since you're also experiencing heavy disk usage, this might be due to insufficient RAM since you're a heavy multitasker and it's using the swap file to make up for that. For example, on my AMD X2 3800 with 1GB RAM, just running Vista Ult. and an AV takes about 530MB just on its own.

[poisonbl]

Can anyone suggest a decent partition table repair tool which can scan the drive and find deleted partitions with operating systems installed on them?

gpart (not gparted) is a very powerful tool for detecting partition boundaries, and it has pulled me out of a major hole in the past, but it is by no means automated, I recommend using something like Knoppix, which I believe already includes that app. Some more info can be found at:
http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/

Vista has been designed to use more RAM than XP with the philosophy of unused RAM is wasted RAM. Since you're also experiencing heavy disk usage, this might be due to insufficient RAM since you're a heavy multitasker and it's using the swap file to make up for that. For example, on my AMD X2 3800 with 1GB RAM, just running Vista Ult. and an AV takes about 530MB just on its own.

Yeah, while I agree with the statement, I don't agree with the means they went about using more of the RAM, XP has a tendency to swap out nearly anything that isn't running actively to the pagefile regardless of free memory, meaning unnecessary disk i/o when the user is only doing a few smaller tasks ... what I think should be meant by "unused RAM is wasted RAM" is that RAM that isn't being used by user applications is wasted RAM, it's not the job of the OS to fill in the unused holes (all my not so humble opinion, of course)

[juanvi]

Hello,

I had in my laptop Windows Vista and Ubuntu with dual boot without any problem, I upgrade Ubuntu to 8.04 simply installing it in the same partition of Ubuntu 7.10 and this installation respected my dual boot (Vista-Ubuntu).
Now I have installed OpenSuSE 10.3 in the same way (in the partition of Ubuntu 8.04) but when I select Vista in the boot it doesn't work. It says it can't init windows, file \Windows\system32\winload.exe not found or damage. (I can found it in /windows/C/Windows/System32)

I think the diference is a partition of 1.4 GB that before (with Ubuntu) was formated nfts and mounted on /media/sd1 and now the format is unknown and is unmounted.

I attach /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst

what should I do?

thank you in advance


/etc/fstab

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part3 / ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part6 /data vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part7 /home ext3 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part2 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part5 swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0



/boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Mon Apr 28 23:19:05 CEST 2008
default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,2)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3 - 2.6.22.17-0.1
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.17-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TO
SHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part3 vga=0x314 resume=/dev/sda5 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.17-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 10.3 - 2.6.22.17-0.1
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.17-0.1-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TO
SHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part3 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off nor
esume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.17-0.1-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

[imnuts]

Hi juanvi and welcome to PROnetworks.

As for your problem, I'm not sure if the forum is stripping out spaces or not, but could you change the last part of your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to the following:

Code: Select all

title         "Windows Vista"
root         noverify         (hd0,1)
chainloader      +1

After the change, restart and see if it works then. Good luck and let us know what happens.

[juanvi]

Thanks for your reply,

I have changed menu.lst but in the boot it doesn't recognize root noverify but rootnoverify.
I have also made the changes keepeing rootnoverify and it either doesn't work. I get the same message in the boot when I choose Vista.

I have mounted the partition of 1.4 GB with Yast and it have recognized it automatically as ntfs but is still not working. Now I have also this line in /etc/fstab

/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK8037G_Z6FVT0MNT-part1 /media/sda1 ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US
.UTF-8 0 0

[imnuts]

Can you run fdisk and print out the paratition layout? I'm not sure if OpenSUSE will label your drive as sda or hda, but you should be able to use either of the following:

Code: Select all

fdisk /dev/hda

or

Code: Select all

fdisk /dev/sda

I'm inclined to think that the second one is what you'll want, and after your in fdisk, just type 'p' and press enter and it should print the partition layout. It could be that GRUB was just setup incorrectly and isn't pointing to the correct place for the Vista bootloader.

[juanvi]

Hi imnuts,
here you are:

fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 9729.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c06c2

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 192 4016 30720000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 4017 5291 10241437+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 5292 9729 35648235 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 5292 5546 2048256 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 5802 9729 31551628+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 5547 5801 2048256 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

[bayouman]

First off - I'm a linux-kinda-guy, but I do admit there are times when having winodws available is an advantage.
I have used dual-booting a lot - the way we get our computers from the IT department is windows, windows, windows on the whole frigging disk!

Solution?
Well, with XP no problems.
1) boot off a live linux cd (grml is my favourite)
2) tar off the entire windows partition to an external usb-drive
3) repartition disk, usually:
1: 256M for boot purposes (ext2)
2: 16-30G (for windows), set up as vfat! (no issues with ntfs-writes)
3: swap (roughly 2xmemory)
4: extended
5: 16G - first linux distro
6: 16G - second linux distro
...
last: whatever is left - common 'user' area for all linuces
4) set partition #2 as 'active'
5) now the tricky part - I cant use mkdosfs on partition #2, because it will not boot. However, I do have an ancient xp-cd which I use to 'install' xp - or rather, I take it as far as letting it format partition #2 with vfat. Whenever it starts copying stuff, I reboot (power off/on works fine)
6) boot from live cd again
7) install grub and make the following menu.lst
default 0
timeout 10
title windaes expee
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
8) I untar the previously tar-file from the external usb-drive and I'm good to go! (well, I have to fix c:\boot.ini first to boot from partition #2 rather than #1)
9) install some linux distro, but _only_ to the appropriate partition (#5 for the first) and install any boot-loader on the first sector of the root filesystem
10) boot from live cd again:
mkdir /mnt/boot; mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
mkdir /mnt/boot/archlinux (say)
mkdir /mnt/sd; mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/sd
cp /mnt/sd/boot/* /mnt/boot/archlinux
vi /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst (update to boot from sda5)
title archlinux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /archlinux/vmlinuz26 ro root=/dev/sda5
initrd /archlinux/kernel26

And there we are - really the only 'bad' moment is not being able to use mkdosfs :-(

OK, I just bought one of these new-fangled triple-core computers with vista preinstalled all over the 320 gig disk. I was up to my usual tricks, but this time it obviously did not work! To be on the safe side, I had also saved the mbr and even tried to replace the first 446 bytes of it (seeing I had changed the partition table) - but to no avail :-( (and yes, I did format it as vfat with my old xp-cd, but then it complains about not finding ntloader)
However, replacing the mbr (other than the partition table ought to bring it back almost to scratch, but it doesn't seem to have done so. And - vista was also originally on the 2nd partition this time - the first was used for recovery (also saved that on my usb-drive)

So - does anyone have _any_ suggestions on how to make my vista boot?
(and yes - I _have_ read all the posts in this thread, but everyone talks only of shrinking the windows partition, not repartitioning). And obviously (I hope) I don't have any vista cd's.