RH7.1 Install Hosed my Win2K setup!

[phil]

Well, I have just installed RH7.1 on my dual PIII system. I bought a seperate HD (40Gb IBM 60GXP) solely to play with Linux. I disabled my Win2K drives from the BIOS (they are setup as RAID0) and chose the new HD (installed on the first IDE channel) as my primary HD. I ran the RH7.1 install CD and chose HDa (as it listed it as 40Gb) to install on even though my Win2K drives did show up (HDe & HDf). I chose HDa to install the MBR etc. In no way did I choose my Win2k drives at any step of the way.

I have just tried my Win2K setup and I get an Operating System failure before the disks even boot. I have tried everything to get to my data (recovery console, emergency repair disks etc) but nothing.....everything has gone. :(

So, just a warning, if you are going to install Linux, remove any other HD's that you won't be using for Linux until after the install. Is this a feature of Linux....to destroy M$? :totallypissedoff:

Other than that, everything is looking good for now.

[dnar]

Phil, NVF m8......



I can't see how the Linux install could do that. Are the drives on the mojo IDE or Promise card ? Which mojo ?



It's a good thing you backed up your Windows drive before you started then, isn't it. ;)

[X-Calibur]

Originally posted by phil
Well, I have just installed RH7.1 on my dual PIII system. I bought a seperate HD (40Gb IBM 60GXP) solely to play with Linux. I disabled my Win2K drives from the BIOS (they are setup as RAID0) and chose the new HD (installed on the first IDE channel) as my primary HD. I ran the RH7.1 install CD and chose HDa (as it listed it as 40Gb) to install on even though my Win2K drives did show up (HDe & HDf). I chose HDa to install the MBR etc. In no way did I choose my Win2k drives at any step of the way.

I have just tried my Win2K setup and I get an Operating System failure before the disks even boot. I have tried everything to get to my data (recovery console, emergency repair disks etc) but nothing.....everything has gone. :(

So, just a warning, if you are going to install Linux, remove any other HD's that you won't be using for Linux until after the install. Is this a feature of Linux....to destroy M$? :totallypissedoff:

Other than that, everything is looking good for now.

Phil... can you get to the Recovery Console? From diskette or better from the original CD?
If yes , then have you tried to prompt:\fix mbr -someswitch

There'S only one switch that I recall.. hit fix -?


Hope that helps... sorry to hear about your mishap...
Have you tried alt.os.windows2000, usualy these guys know quite a lot...

Good luck !!!!

[phil]

dnar, the Win2K drives are on the Highpoint controller....no, I didn't back up my drives before I started as this sort of thing shouldn't happen! Granted, most of my files are not kept on this machine, but are on the server, but you would not believe how much important email I have had over the past few days that I would have preferred not to have lost. I think I took all reasonable steps to prevent Linux writing to my Win2K drives...they were disabled in the BIOS and the Highpoint BIOS.


X-Calibur, I can't use the revovery console from either the CD or the ERD....I get the path not found error. As I have multiple partitions on these drives and all my data is stored on a seperate partition, I thought I would try a re-install. It looks like the drive has been totally screwed...all partitions are gone! I have to re-partition and reformat. What a pain in the arse.

[dnar]

Phil, I would post on: linux.redhat.install and comp.os.linux.hardware and see what the reaction is....

[kirek]

Sorry to hear about your loss. :( I have had similar problems before with Win2k on one drive and Linux on another. I don't have RAID though, so that may add problems that I am unaware of.
I've had Linux FUBAR my Master Boot Record before. And I've had it disable the boot partition for windows before. If you can get a win9x boot floppy with fdisk on it you can try fdisk /mbr and check to make sure that you still have a boot partition enabled for Win2k. But I don't know how the RAID plays into this so be careful.:)
The way my setup is now I have my win2k disk as hde and my linux drive as hdg. (Highpoint controller) And I have to actually go into my Highpoint contrller setup and change the drive that I want to boot when I switch between OSes. It's a PITA but I am booting Win2k less and less lately.
Hope this helps and don't give up yet!:)

[dnar]

Originally posted by kirek



The way my setup is now I have my win2k disk as hde and my linux drive as hdg. (Highpoint controller) And I have to actually go into my Highpoint contrller setup and change the drive that I want to boot when I switch between OSes. It's a PITA but I am booting Win2k less and less lately.


Hope this helps and don't give up yet!:)

-phil

I thought you tried to rescue the MBR??? If not, I hope it works m8!
:eek:


- kirek

Why not leave your hard drives to boot Windows and use a boot floppy for Linux. This is what I did several years ago, after Installing Windows clobbered my Linux partition..... I did not want to f**!K with MBR and LILO at the time, so I had the boot floppy sitting in hte drive, just pop it in and re-boot into Linux.

[kirek]

Originally posted by dnar













-phil







I thought you tried to rescue the MBR??? If not, I hope it works m8!
:eek:












I thought he couldn't get into the win2k recovery console at all. Sometimes a dos boot floppy will do the trick.


All you can do now is try Phil, it shouldn't make things any worse.
;)














- kirek







Why not leave your hard drives to boot Windows and use a boot floppy for Linux. This is what I did several years ago, after Installing Windows clobbered my Linux partition..... I did not want to f**!K with MBR and LILO at the time, so I had the boot floppy sitting in hte drive, just pop it in and re-boot into Linux.





Yea, I was thinking about doing that but I think I am just gonna trash win2k alltogether. I am getting a laptop from work next week with win2k on it so I won't really need it on my home sys anymore. :cool:




I really want to learn more in Linux and for me the only way to do it is to force myself to use it.



:removethewindowscrutch: :D

[dnar]

Originally posted by kirek







:removethewindowscrutch: :D

LOL! :removethewindowsbeartrap: :D

[phil]

What a bloody day!! It seems everything is totally gone, so time to move hard drives about :)

I am swapping the 2x30Gb's from the TBird (my server) to the dually and the 2x15Gb's from the dually to the TBird. I will install RH7.1 on the TBird and Win2K Server on the Dually. My new 40Gb drive will be on either machine as my MP3 and backup file store....depending on how I feel in the next couple of minutes.


My head is in bits now, I don't know whether I am coming or going :)


PS, do you realise how long a 40Gb drive takes to format? ....bloody ages!!

PPS, do you know how long it takes to transfer 11Gb over a 100Mbps LAN? .....even longer!!

[dnar]

Phil, I know the feeling mate. Get away from it for a bit. You will feel better.

My last "disaster" went like this:

Stage 1
------
I was running Windows 95/Linux dual boot on my main development machine (the world was on the system). I had Linux pretty much sorted, ready to make the move 100%. I was playing with "hdparm" to try and get UDMA working. The HOWTO does say "!!!!!!" and that jazz, so off I went trying for UDMA 66 (the drive & controller on that system would only do 33). Booooof! Lockup, kernel panics. Reset machine, no booties..... I run the rescue disk and the h/disk is SNAFU, I run e2fsck and it's real messed. So, wanting to upgrade RedHat, me thinks, welll thats how I'll fix it.

Stage 2
------
Insert RedHat CDROM. Select "upgrade". Bugger, its smart, it knows the filesystem is SNAFU and won;t upgrade. Real catch 22! Ok, me thinks, I have the data backdup, FULL INSTALL and START AGAIN. So, I go through all the RedHat menus, select expert mode, setup partition selections, AND THEN make the big mistake. I went forward and backward through the RedHat menus a few times, and when I went back to the partitioning menu, a dialog popped up telling me that the drive was now being formatted..............

Stage 3
------
My 100% working copy of Windows, used every day for development work is now gone. I had a design job on the go at the time, this all happened around midnight, I needed the machine first thing that morning......

Stage 4
------
Sweat alot.
Swear alot.
Curse alot.

Stage 5
------
Start again, Install Windows. Setup programs (From install disks.....), restore data backup.

I'm glad I dont have native Windows anymore, and for that matter, bugger around with drives on my server anymore!!!!

[MechCD]

Dang! i wish i had 2 40gb drives to "play" around with!

As for the fubared Win2k, Was the win2k drive enabled? Was it installed? I don't see why you would take it out for a linux install. Try getting your MBR back, from a bootdisk or whatever

[Yo_Mama]

hasn't anybody else heard of Ghost but me? ;)

[MechCD]

Yup, its a rather usefull tool if you have space or network drives :)