[ale] error booting XP after dual boot install of Ubuntu 7.10

Daniel Howard dhhoward at comcast.net
Wed Apr 9 08:45:09 EDT 2008


Ah, the limitation to 4 primary partitions, that's why I had to select 
"Logical" partition for the final two (the standard installation 
instructions said use Primary for all, but when I got to the last one it 
said "unusable")

I could delete the Recovery partition and try again...or my dad has the 
recovery CD for Win XP back at home, when I take him back, I could start 
all over from scratch.  Is it best to start with Linux, then reinstall 
Windows, or vice versa?

Thanks Brian, and to all for the help!  The best news is that for the 
next few days at least, he's only using the Linux OS and he's very happy 
with it.  I may even talk him into trying to help his local rural 
Tennessee elementary school switch to it like we did here in Atlanta.

One school at a time...Daniel


Brian Pitts wrote:
> dhhoward at comcast.net wrote:
>> Here's results of fdisk command in sudo:
>>
>> Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
>> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
>> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
>> Disk identifier: 0xcab10bee
>>
>>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
>> /dev/sda1   *           1        9727    78132096    7  HPFS/NTFS
>> /dev/sda2           18483       19457     7824600    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
>> Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
>> /dev/sda3            9728        9733       48195   83  Linux
>> /dev/sda4            9734       18482    70276342+   5  Extended
>> /dev/sda5            9734        9795      497983+  82  Linux swap / 
>> Solaris
>> /dev/sda6            9796       18482    69778296   83  Linux
>>
>> Partition table entries are not in disk order
>>
>> Looks like XP is indeed the first partition (sda1) and sda2 is the HP 
>> Pavilion Recovery D: drive.
>>
>> I don't recognize sda3, but sda 4-6 are the root, swap, and /boot 
>> partitions I created manually during the Ubuntu 7.10 install.
>>
> 
> sda4 is an extended partition; think of that as a partition that 
> contains other partitions. This is necessary because there is only room 
> to describe 4 partitions in the master boot record. My interpretation is 
> that /boot is on 3, swap is on 5, / is on 6, and the actual disk order is
> 
> Windows
> /boot
> swap
> /
> HP Recovery
> 
> I don't know why this would cause problems for Windows.
> 
> -Brian
> 


-- 
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation


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