[linux-audio-user] Win XP won't boot after Demudi install :-(

[Alejandro Lopez]

Guys,

I'm sorry for the long post. Your help to recover my system is much 
appreciated.

My HP PC came with one 40 Gb hard disk with 2 primary partitions inside. The 
first one is a hidden partition meant for recovery, in a propietary format. 
It's size is something like 3-4 Gb. The second one is a NTFS partition 
taking the remainder of the disk, which contains a preconfigured XP Home 
Edition including applications. After some resizing and tinkering, I managed 
to repartition and keep my XP, as follows:

/dev/hda1,  1-348,     2630848+, 12 (Compaq Diags)
/dev/hda2,  349-2001,  12496680, 7  (HPFS/NTFS)
/dev/hda3,  2002-4282, 17244360, 83 (Linux)
/dev/hda4,  4283-5174, 6743520,  5  (Extended)
/dev/hda5, 4283-5103, 6206759+, b  (W95 FAT32)
/dev/hda6, 5104-5174, 536759+,  82 (Linux Swap)

(As you can see, I had to create my swap partition inside an extended 
partition. Not sure if that's a performance penalty compared to a primary 
but I ran out of primaries and I wanted to have some shared space between XP 
and Linux, hence the FAT32 partition that both can read from and write to.)

Next I installed Redhat 9, which installed Grub as part of the installation 
process. Not sure where Grub resided, as I just followed the default 
installation because I know nothing about Grub and the way it works (I'm 
used to Lilo, but thought that if Grub is the default, well I guess it must 
be better). After installation only the Linux partition would appear in the 
boot menu, so I edited the Grub configuration and added the XP partition. 
after that everything was perfect, and I could boot either. The boot menu 
has a nice graphic interface.

Recently, I decided to switch from Redhat to A/Demudi, and I installed 
Demudi 1.2.0 beta (the final stable release had not come out yet and this 
was the first music distro ever to feature an integrated installation for OS 
+ music stuff). In this case, the installation even added the XP partition 
the the Grub menu, so it appears in the boot menu. In this case, the boot 
menu has a more conventional text interface, but both are the same Grub 
software I guess. Again I don't have a clue where Grub resides, and I was 
not even informed / asked during installation if I remember well!

The thing now is that Demudi boots fine but either Grub or the partitioning 
software that the install process runs must have done something nasty 
somewhere. When I select Win XP, the HP recovery software triggers, which 
would restore the original partitions (2 primaries, the recovery / hidden 
one and the big NTFS one for XP) if it wasn't because now this software 
crashes with an error message, halting the machine. (I have screwed up XP in 
the past, making this recovery software trigger and restore the partitions 
and software and it used to work.) HP's solution to this problem is to get 
from them this same recovery software, this time in the form of a CD, to 
restore the whole hard disk. From there, I would start repartitioning again. 
My problem is, even if I do that, I'm afraid that installing Demudi will 
screw up the whole thing again, so no real gain there. So I'm thinking that 
I could probably try to tell Grub to back up whatever I used to have in my 
hard disk and see what happens? (Although I'm not sure wether the problem 
was created by Grub or the install software.) The other thing maybe worth 
trying is to get this recovery CD in the hope that it will create a big XP 
partition only with no recovery partition. Then I could have all primaries, 
with a more conventional scheme which would be less confusing for whatever 
Linux installation software.

So what do you think? What software is the culprit? Grub or otherwise? Where 
does Grub live? Is it a good idea to tell Grub to back up? Any of you with 
PCs featuring this kind of recovery systems? Any problems with them? I 
should mention that all my data is safe in backups, so it's just a matter of 
configuring a clean machine (I'm keen to reinstall XP and / or Demudi).

Thank you very much.

Cheers,

Alex

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