Problems with SHIFT install


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Hello all... I want to learn to use/like Linux, but every time I try it I get frustrated with it.

I don't want to go into all the details of previous Linux installs I've overwritten with another Windows install. This time I want to see what can be done to help me with my current install. I looked around and tried to figure out which one I should try this time. I settled on Neowin's very own Shift. I DLed the ISO with KDE. Now this being an OS I burned the CD at 4x. Nero said it burned successfully. I grabbed a second HDD for my second machine (the grunt) and installed it on the primary SATA. My Windows install is on the primary master IDE. I went into the BIOS and enabled the SATA controller and set it as the HDD to boot from. This is where I usually disco the Windows HDD so nothing happens to it. I forgot to do that and now it won't start without the HDD with the failed Shift install.

You see Shift gave me a couple errors when it installed. Not being a Linux guy I didn't know what to do. So I clicked the OK (or whatever the button was labeled) and it eventually finished the install. It got to a point where it told me to remove the CD and restart the system. It starts up and I see the boot menu showing Shift and Windows booting options. I realize I screwed up at that point by forgetting to disco the Windows HDD. Well, it also seems that Shift won't start up. I keep getting this message...

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition Press any key to continue...

The first three boot options all give me that error. The only option that works is to boot to Windows. But I can ONLY boot to windows through the Ubuntu boot menu.

First off this is my mistake for NOT making sure I had disco'd the Windows HDD. That is what I usually do when I do any kind of dual boot, I just prefer to change the initial boot drive in the BIOS rather than have a boot menu option. So besides a fresh install of Windows (and all the wonderful moving of files not wanting to be lost) on the Windows drive, how might I go about reclaiming my Windows drive? Would this be as easy as booting to the Recovery Console with Windows and fixing the MBR? Or is there someplace I can find the proper command lines to make the Windows HDD work for me again? I'll worry about getting a good Linux install after I get my windows working again on that computer.

And I seem to be one of those people I speak of in my sig... :|

PRE-Thanks to anybody willing to help me out here.

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Fixing the MBR should do it, I believe it's fixmbr on Windows XP. You have access to Windows and just want to restore your bootloader to only boot Windows right? After you fixmbr, you can delete the Linux partitions, but be careful - Linux partitions! :p

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Fixing the MBR should do it, I believe it's fixmbr on Windows XP. You have access to Windows and just want to restore your bootloader to only boot Windows right? After you fixmbr, you can delete the Linux partitions, but be careful - Linux partitions! :p

They are on separate HDDs. So I'm hoping that fix mbr is all I have to do. When I go for another try at installing Shift/Linux I'll make sure as heck that I disco the Windows HDD before starting.

EDIT: Adding a THANK YOU for your response!

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Uhm... Yeah. Trying to do a "fix mbr" did not work. I booted off the XP CD and there was NO option for Recovery Console. This was with and with out the extra HDD that I installed Shift on. I am currently moving files off of the Windows HDD so I can reinstall XP. I prolly won't attempt this until late Wednesday or even Thursday evening. So, if ANY ideas come to anybodies mind, PLEASE tell me.

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Is this XP Home, by any chance. I seem to recall that XP Home did not have the recovery console.

Worst case, I have a copy of the necessary 440 bytes of XP MBR at this location: http://markjensen.googlepages.com/mbr440.bin

You can use the Linux dd command to dump the data right to the drive MBR you specify.

I won't give an example command without knowing for sure what your drive structure is, so could you please post the output of a sudo fdisk -l (that's a lower case letter "L", not the number one)? This will tell us what your Linux sees your harddrives in which order.

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Do you have a floppy drive by chance?

if not, then you can download a bootable windows 98 dos disk from www.bootdisk.com, then burn it to CD. Shouldnt be to hard i think.

Boot from that CD and then run fdisk on your HDD and fixmbr.

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Is this XP Home, by any chance. I seem to recall that XP Home did not have the recovery console.

Worst case, I have a copy of the necessary 440 bytes of XP MBR at this location: http://markjensen.googlepages.com/mbr440.bin

You can use the Linux dd command to dump the data right to the drive MBR you specify.

I won't give an example command without knowing for sure what your drive structure is, so could you please post the output of a sudo fdisk -l (that's a lower case letter "L", not the number one)? This will tell us what your Linux sees your harddrives in which order.

Thank you very much for your input Mark. I, uh... I let my impatience get to me and I've already installed Fedora 10 on the HDD I had intended to run Linux. It went just fine. Now I'm back at that getting frustrated with Linux part. Having issues installing nVidia drivers. Took me a while to figure out how to get to ROOT as the nVidia installer requires. Just can't get it to do anything good from there.

Oh yeah, it's XP Pro that I'm running on the main HDD.

Do you have a floppy drive by chance?

if not, then you can download a bootable windows 98 dos disk from www.bootdisk.com, then burn it to CD. Shouldnt be to hard i think.

Boot from that CD and then run fdisk on your HDD and fixmbr.

Thank you too Rich. Oddly enough I actually DO have a floppy drive in that case. It's not hooked up though, it's only there because I forgot where the drive bay cover is...

Question about your response though. If my primary partition is NTFS, would 98's FDisk be able to fix that?

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Here is the guide to install Nvidia drivers on Fedora. Just make sure that you use the right commands for your graphics card. Also, make sure that you use the correct OS build (x86 vs x64)...... "su" means superuser so when you type it, you'll need to enter your root password to get root (administrative) privileges.....

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=204752

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Thank you too Rich. Oddly enough I actually DO have a floppy drive in that case. It's not hooked up though, it's only there because I forgot where the drive bay cover is...

Question about your response though. If my primary partition is NTFS, would 98's FDisk be able to fix that?

No problem mate.

Not sure that it would fix it. You would more likely need to fdisk /fixbmr then re-install windows. Fdisk i believe only works with fat32 and earlier.

You could however, boot to a linux install and configure the drives through there are primary windows partitions...

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