# mandrake/win xp dual boot problems



## Questions? (Apr 7, 2003)

to anyone who can help, or maybe experienced the same problem and learned how to fix it... any help is greatly appreciated:
I was running windows xp pro on a 120 gig HD, and decided to install mandrake linux 9.1 in a dual boot using partition magic. I was led to believe this would be easy, so I gave it a try.. The installation went down no problem, and Linux boots fine, but there was no windows in the boot options. Ok, so I went through the LILO configuration, and added Windows XP, which is hda1 on my HD, linux is hda2, and the swap partition is hda3. Fine, now Windows XP is an entry in the boot loader, but all is not well. When I choose to boot up windows, the computer goes through the motions, and the black screen comes up as usual when winxp is loading, but it cuts to a blue screen error that says it had to shut down...
I did a little research this weekend, and found out that this might be due to partition magic hiding the windows partition??? any thoughts suggestions..please
Thanks


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)

Run PM again and unhide the partitions.
With Mandrake 9.1 you dont need PM to install Linux with XP;9.1 has a NTFS partition resizer that does the same thing during installation.
HTH
lynch


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## Questions? (Apr 7, 2003)

I thank you for the help lynch, but I can't get into partition magic any more. I have it installed in windows, and the boot disks I created for PM won't work, I don't know if the floppys are corrupted, but it begins to boot and gives me an error. Is there any way of unhiding the partition from linux itself? This is the only thing I can get to work.
thanks again


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)

What version of PM? PM 8 is a bootable CD that does the same thing as the floppies.Not sure about the earlier versions.You could take the CD to another comp and make new disks.
lynch


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## Questions? (Apr 7, 2003)

will do Lynch, thanks again. I hope I can get this working...


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)

If not,there's a chance that Grub can be set up to unhide the partitions.That is,if you're using Grub.I dont think Lilo can do this but I'm not 100% sure
If you can,post a copy of your partition table.To do that,open a terminal and *su* to root.Then type this:
*fdisk -l /dev/hda > /home/regularusername/fdisk.txt*
This will re-direct the output of fdisk to a text file in your regular user /home directory that you can open with kwrite or kedit and copy and paste into your next reply.(The -l is a small L)Also,there's no need to create the target file, fdisk.txt:it will be created automatically.
HTH
lynch


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## Questions? (Apr 7, 2003)

Thank you for all your help Lynch, I got it working using your other suggestion of remaking the boot disks. It took a couple of tries, I guess I have a lot of floppys that need to be thrown away...but finally I was able to boot into PM and unhide my Win XP partition. Everything seems to be going fine now. 
So thanks again Lynch


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## lynch (Aug 3, 2002)




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