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

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 _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar - get it now! http://toolbar.msn.com/