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[andalucia]

given that it's XP, and there's a problem, i'd give it a 99.99999% chance of it being an ntfs partition, because if it was fat of some sort, it would be easy, and if it were easy it wouldn't be so much fun we wanted to learn new curse words to swear at it with.

if it's ntfs, we likely have many more problems.

My XP partition is NTFS but the two smaller ones I created are FAT32.  Va, I'm going to tryyour advice right now, and your confident tone reassures me somewhat.  I was thinking about my poor computer through lectures all morning.

[arkabee]

My XP partition is NTFS but the two smaller ones I created are FAT32.  Va, I'm going to tryyour advice right now, and your confident tone reassures me somewhat.  I was thinking about my poor computer through lectures all morning.

so, you had a HD partitioned 1/2 NTFS and 1/2 blank.

then you created 2 fat partitions.
so, it would be 1/2 NTFs, 1/4 FAT, 1/4 FAT.

the NTFS had your XP install etc et al.

you stcuk in the mandrake cd and installed where?

[andalucia]

If you installed Mandrake, I'm guessing your bootloader is LILO.  The choices you get when you boot up are determined by the configuration file for LILO, which should be named lilo.conf.  I can't recall exactly where that file lives. It's probably in /etc. If it's not in /etc, run this command to find it:

Code: [Select]

find / -name lilo.conf -print

Ok.
Say one ran that command and one's computer went BLORP.  and the run command window disappeared.  (Alarmingly close to the thread's title, yes, I'm aware)
How would one interpret that?

Edit:  arkabee, I installed Mandrake to one of the two FAT partitions.

Edit encore:
HardDrake shows, under Disk, hda, sda, and sdb.  Presumably these are my three partitions.  Is this a good sign?

[jough]

Your first problem is that you're running Mandrake.  But I'll digress from Linux distro snobbery.

sda?  That's a removeable device, not a hard disk partition.  Hm...  :shock:

What Va wrote should have worked fine - PROVIDED that your partitions are set up right and the bios can see your entire HD, etc.  

What did you install first?  Windows?  And how did you create the partitions?

You may have to mount the partitions, but let me think about this for a minute before telling you something that could damage what you already have.  

Unless you or something on your PC already deleted a partition, you should be able to recover your data, especially if you can boot to Linux.

[andalucia]

Your first problem is that you're running Mandrake.  But I'll digress from Linux distro snobbery.

sda?  That's a removeable device, not a hard disk partition.  Hm...  :shock:

What Va wrote should have worked fine - PROVIDED that your partitions are set up right and the bios can see your entire HD, etc.  

What did you install first?  Windows?  And how did you create the partitions?

You may have to mount the partitions, but let me think about this for a minute before telling you something that could damage what you already have.  

Unless you or something on your PC already deleted a partition, you should be able to recover your data, especially if you can boot to Linux.

I know Mandrake doesn't have the distro cred.  I'm trying it because it's supposedly easy.  I was worried that the sda's weren't partitions.  I had my computer built for me and requested that Windows run in its own partition, leaving the rest of the hard drive for me to fuck around with.  So Windows was installed first, and the subsequent partitions were created in the XP Disk Management utility.

Oh, and arkabee, I can't get my computer to boot from a Windows disk.  It just goes straight to Mandrake's boot menu.

[arkabee]

1- go into BIOS and tell it to boot from A/FLOPPY first, before it boots from the HD. depending on your BIOS, it may be in various places.  yer a smart kid, i'm sure it will be fun.

2- you can't install linux onto a FAT partition.

3- i would interpret "BLORP" as : get the hell out of the GUI.  hold <CTRL> and <ALT> down, and press <F1>.  log on as root, and run VA's command again, and tell us what it said.

3- sd# is usually designated for scsi, it could be the cd-rom if it's atapi. regardless.

4- at the root prompt, do the following-
- "fdisk /dev/hda"
it should say "press m for help"
do so, it your specific alternate.
"p" should be "print partition table"
do so, or your specific alternate.
"q" should be "quit without saving changes"
do so, pr your specific alternate.
post the result.

5- which version of Mandrake did you install?

[arkabee]

6- and which bootloader did you tell it to use when you installed:
lilo or grub??

[andalucia]

2- you can't install linux onto a FAT partition.

I will try your other instructions, but this is the part that frightens me most, and makes me wish I hadn't installed Mandrake so late at night.  Because essentially that means either the installer reformatted the partition or it installed Mandrake over XP on my NTFS partition, in which case I'm fucked.  Unfortunately, it's kinda seeming that way.  I do have my important files backed up on my PC back home in Ontario, but still, not having access to any of my music or documents until Thanksgiving would rather suck, and also mean that my mixswap CDs would be very very late indeed.

Oh, and I installed Mandrake 9.1.

[andalucia]

Although running the search outside of the gui  at least worked, I got file/directory not found when I did the search for lilo.

[arkabee]

2- you can't install linux onto a FAT partition.

I will try your other instructions, but this is the part that frightens me most, and makes me wish I hadn't installed Mandrake so late at night.  Because essentially that means either the installer reformatted the partition or it installed Mandrake over XP on my NTFS partition, in which case I'm fucked.  Unfortunately, it's kinda seeming that way.  I do have my important files backed up on my PC back home in Ontario, but still, not having access to any of my music or documents until Thanksgiving would rather suck, and also mean that my mixswap CDs would be very very late indeed.

Oh, and I installed Mandrake 9.1.

no sleep sucks.

since you had an existing partition structure when you installed, and since 9.1 is pretty recent, it would have given you a choice:
do i use the whole disk, or just part of it boss?

no sleep sucks.

there's a geat chance that the NTFS partition still exists, and the mandrake install whomped on one of the other patitions.

- Run: "df -vk" from a command prompt and post the result.  this, incidnetally, can not mess anything up.  also, run "mount" and post the result.

so, if mandrake installed on one of the other partitions, it would have reformateed it to a diff partion type, hence "linux can't install on fat".  head cold is messing with my ability to be coherent.

ok, so let's say the ntfs is ok.  you boot, your BIOS is apparently set to boot of HD first, so it looks at the MasterBootRecord of the first HD it sees, and you linus boot loader takes over.

which boot loader is it?  is it lilo or is it grub?  the world may never know.

so the bootloader, residing in the MBR (or at least enough of it ...) does it's thing, which is apparently (since you can configure it to do different things, which is why we need to know "grub or lilo" or else we won't be able to tell you how to boot to windows later if we figrue out if you still have an ntfs partition) to zoom over to the linux partition and find your /boot partition and then linux starts a loading.

so, we need to figure out:
1) do you have an ntfs partition anymore
2) how to get it to boot from that partition if it' s there anymore.

hence all the questions.

incidentally, i hope i'm not sounding like a dick, i'm just sort of dizzy right now.

[arkabee]

Although running the search outside of the gui  at least worked, I got file/directory not found when I did the search for lilo.

you prolly have grub.


anyways,
did you see a screen like this:
http://doc.mandrakelinux.com/MandrakeLinux/91/en/Quick_Startup.html/drakxid-doPartitionDisks.html

when you were isntalling?

[andalucia]

Although running the search outside of the gui  at least worked, I got file/directory not found when I did the search for lilo.

you prolly have grub.


anyways,
did you see a screen like this:
http://doc.mandrakelinux.com/MandrakeLinux/91/en/Quick_Startup.html/drakxid-doPartitionDisks.html

when you were isntalling?

I'll do a search for grub and try that out.  But yeah, I did see that screen and I did tell it to install to the existing 1/4 partition.  If I recally correctly (unlikely) it said that that it'd need to create mount points on that partition, which I let it do, thinking that everything would henceforth be hunky-dory.

[arkabee]

I'll do a search for grub and try that out.  But yeah, I did see that screen and I did tell it to install to the existing 1/4 partition.  If I recally correctly (unlikely) it said that that it'd need to create mount points on that partition, which I let it do, thinking that everything would henceforth be hunky-dory.

this indeed would be the good and happy data that makes the truth of your hard drive smile.

go forth and run "mount" and "df -vk" and post the results, and we shall have your grub eating out of your hand in no time.

[arkabee]

verily did ye see a screen thusly!:
http://doc.mandrakelinux.com/MandrakeLinux/91/en/Quick_Startup.html/misc-params.html#drakxid-setupBootloader

(you might have to scroll down to see the section, it was messed up for me.  it's called "Bootloader".)

[andalucia]

Arkabee, you are a million kinds of awesome for helping me out with this.  Especially In Your Weakened State:

It didn't recognize df-vk as a command.

When I gave the command "mount", it said this:

/dev /ide /host0 /bus0 /target0 /lun0/ part1 on /type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /proc /bus /usb type usbdevfs (rw)
none on /dev type devfs (rw)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw)
none on /dev type devpts (rw, mode=06020)
none on /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part b on /home type ext3 (rw)
none on /mnt/floppy typesupermount (rw, sync, dev=/dev/fd0, fs=ext2:vfat,--, umask=0, iocharset=iso8859 -15, codepage=850

So the consensus seems to be that There Is None.

This is all extremely humbling after years of using Windows.