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Tasklist

FS#1168 - Grub .95 causes NTFS boot corruption

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Joe Olivas (joeolivas) - Thursday, 22 July 2004, 10:21 GMT
Last edited by Judd Vinet (judd) - Friday, 23 July 2004, 20:09 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Current
Status Closed
Assigned To Judd Vinet (judd)
Architecture not specified
Severity High
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7 Wombat
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 0%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Upon installing GRUB .95, the NTFS bootable partition gets damaged and cannot boot. GRUB is written to the MBR of hda (ntfs) and Arch resides on hdb. Arch still boots fine. Using a windows rescue disk and performing a fixboot and fixmbr solves the problem of the windows boot.

An existing installation and a fresh installation were tested and results were the same. Reverting back to GRUB .94 solves the problem.

menu.lst was unchanged in both.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Judd Vinet (judd)
Wednesday, 02 February 2005, 17:52 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Sunday, 23 January 2005, 15:00 GMT
Judd-- Would it be helpful if I simulated this in our lab? Obviously not today, because there's a blizzard! But this coming week.

What versions of Windows did this happen with? I guess I can start by simulating with a version each of NT4 workstation, 2kpro, and XPpro.

- P
Comment by Joe Olivas (joeolivas) - Sunday, 23 January 2005, 22:32 GMT
This happened with XP Pro. I have since retried the upgrade, and still had the same results (boots to Arch, not XP) then used the XP rescue disk and did a 'fixboot' (fixmbr was unecessary). This fixed the problem, and I am able to dual boot just fine.
Comment by Judd Vinet (judd) - Tuesday, 25 January 2005, 19:18 GMT
Strange. So when Grub writes to the MBR, it's also clobbering the boot record on your XP partition?

Do you see any output from GRUB that suggests this? I do not have any NTFS partitions to test with.
Comment by Joe Olivas (joeolivas) - Tuesday, 25 January 2005, 21:59 GMT
Basically that's what happened. GRUB seemed to install fine, said everything was normal or whatever, and had no errors. It's been about 4 months since I last messed with it, so I may be forgetting something...

Nobody else seems to have had this problem though, which makes me wonder if it's just some weird hw quirk.
Comment by Paul Mattal (paul) - Tuesday, 25 January 2005, 22:50 GMT
OK. I did an install as close to yours as I can get easily.

That is, Win XP Pro on Primary Master (hda). Then I used the Arch 0.7 beta2 base installer to install Arch onto Secondary Master (hdc).

In menu.lst, I configured settings for Win XP Pro:

title Win XP Pro
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I left the Arch config section as it was.

Booted fine on the first try. Arch boots fine, also. Package is grub 0.95-2.

What do we propose I try next? Maybe it needs to be hdb? What else is different between what I did and what you did, Joe?

- P
Comment by Joe Olivas (joeolivas) - Thursday, 27 January 2005, 03:07 GMT
I have Arch on hdb, but other than that it looks the same.

Here's my menu.lst:

# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux
root (hd1,2)
kernel (hd1,0)/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/discs/disc1/part3 ro vga=791

# (1) Windows
title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

I just noticed I don't have "rootnoverify" (actually not 100% sure what that does), but I know I did back when I had this bug. Still boots fine though...Maybe I made a stupid error?
Comment by Judd Vinet (judd) - Wednesday, 02 February 2005, 03:00 GMT
Does GRUB 0.96 work fine?
Comment by Joe Olivas (joeolivas) - Wednesday, 02 February 2005, 04:05 GMT
Indeed. Just installed... no issues at all so far!

Thanks!!
Comment by galen thurber (galen2) - Wednesday, 02 February 2005, 11:42 GMT
im pretty sure it is windows [snipe other distros] feature.
I ran into this on other distros.
highly suggest using lilo on MBR
and have it point to grub on a partition
other=/dev/hdb

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