Re: Parition Table problem.
From: John (John_at_somewhere.com)
Date: 06/14/04
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Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:53:39 GMT
On Sun, 13 Jun 2004 19:25:42 +0100, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 19:23:15 -0600
> "Isaac" <Isaac@notmail.com> wrote:
>
> I> None of the 3 different operating systems will boot. Is there any way to
> I> "re-jig" the partition table so that partition 1 starts at the beginning
> I> of the drive and all the others move up accordingly?
>
> Sure - you just have to drive fdisk -u[1] *very* carefully, keep notes
> and do not commit changes unless you are sure you have it right, it is quite
> easy to write complete nonsense with fdisk. You sound like you understand
> how partition tables work so you should be OK as long as you keep a clear
> head about what you are trying to achieve.
>
> [1] That's for the FreeBSD version of fdisk you should be able to do similar
> things with the Linux and Windows ones too.
I'm "Isaac" (at least when I'm in a state of shock, using my kid's
computer).
I went into the bios screens on my machine and "forced" the primary
30G drive to use LBA (the bios normally autodetects, but something had
happened to derail the autodetection and the machine was detecting the
drive as "large"). Probably the bios could not make head nor tail of the
partition table.
After forcing LBA, everything was fine except that the hda4 partition was
considered faulty by fdisk - I fixed that by deleting it. Everything looks
ok now and I can boot Windows 2000 and linux as usual.
I've taken a couple of lessons from this - FreeBSD 5.2.1 is flaky enough
that you should not install it on a machine with anything valuable on it.
I thought it was a bit high handed of it to mark the hda4 partition as
"bootable", especially when FreeBSD could not boot anyway - after writing
a screwball partition! Secondly - fdisk is a risky program to use at any
time. I note that the linux manpage for fdisk recommends using cfdisk!!
Yikes, dodged a bullet there (through dumb luck). I do have backups but
reinstalling operating systems is a lot of work regardless.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
-- John
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