Installed Fedora 12, now can't boot/access Vista

[Pirm]

Hi

I've not been able to find a solution on the forums, so thought I'd post.

My DELL PC came with Vista installed and I then added Ubuntu. This seemed to work fine although I didn't really use Ubuntu too much. Then last week I decide to replace Ubuntu with Fedora 12. I selected the replace existing Linux option during the install process.

After installation, Grub displayed 2 options: Fedora and Other. Fedora was fine, other didn't boot. After readinf around I added another option for vista, but this results in the following error:
Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

fdisk -l returns:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x50000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 7 56196 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 8 1313 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 1314 26582 202973242+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 26583 60801 274864117+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 26583 26608 204800 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 26608 60801 274658303+ 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 275.9 GB, 275930677248 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 33546 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 5318 MB, 5318377472 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 646 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table


and my menu.lst is as follows:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,4)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
# initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
# hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=uk rhgb quiet
initrd /initramfs-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE.img
title Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I've also tried mounting the Vista partition without any success:
> ntfs-3g /dev/sda3 /mnt/vista
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda3': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda3' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?


Any assistance on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm starting to worry that I've lost my vista partition :(


Thanks

[mbratch]

I'm a little confused by the menu.lst contents. It shows the label on the Windows boot partition as being "Windows Vista" but you said Grub shows "Other" when it boots. Can you show your grub.conf contents?

Also, if you want to mount the ntfs partition, you'd want to use "mount -t ntfs" or "mount -t ntfs-3g" (not sure which off hand, but one of those should work).

[Pirm]

Thanks for your response Mark.

The "Windows Vista" label is the one that I added. The "Other" label (towards the bottom of menu.lst) was added during the installation process. menu.lst is a link to grub.conf.

No joy with the mount command. Tried:

# mount -t ntfs /dev/sda3 /mnt/vista/
NTFS signature is missing.
Failed to mount '/dev/sda3': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda3' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

[errorxp]

you could try ntfs-config tool and see if it can mount your partitions, or reinstall windows bootloader and delete linux partitions if there is no other way to boot into windows. i remember having some problems myself when using default layout for linux partitions.

[mbratch]

Did you try (hd0,1) for the Windows Vista boot drive?

[Pirm]

I don't appear to have ntfs-config on my system, what does it do ?

I tried to boot up with the Vista installation DVD that came with the PC. I attempted a System Repair but the operating system (vista) wasn't listed. That's leading me to think that I've lost the vista partition. If the system repair can't display the operating system, do you think that windows bootloader will work?

In Fedora I ran up Palimpsest Disk Utility. This lists the following partitions:
1 /dev/sda1 FAT16 Dell Utility
2 /dev/sda2 HPFS/NTFS Recovery
3 /dev/sda3 HPFS/NTFS 208GB Unrecognized
4 /dev/sda4 Extended 281GB Extended
5 /dev/sda5 Linux 210MB Filesystem
6 /dev/sda6 Linux LVM 281GB LVM2 Physical Volume

Are the mounting and boot up issues to do with /dev/sda3 being 'Unrecognized'?
Is there anyway to fix this?

---------- Post added at 05:23 PM CST ---------- Previous post was at 05:22 PM CST ----------

I did try the (hd0,1) but got a BOOTMGR is missing error message

[mbratch]

I see, yes if (hd0,1) is the "recovery" partition then it won't have a boot manager on it for Windows.

I'm not sure what can be done to revoer the /dev/sda3 partition. Can you boot the Windows DVD to give you some kind of command prompt and see what the Windows FDISK thinks of the partition?

The frustrating thing here is that your data probably really is intact on that partition, just that some small part of the information was scrogged keeping it from being recognized. Not sure how that would happen during a normal install.

[errorxp]

you can install ntfs-config through yum. it's a GUI for mounting windows partitions in linux . i use it since i can't be bothered manually configuring fstab. you can install it by:

yum install ntfs-config

Did you try to log in to your windows installation through the recovery console?

I can't say for sure but from my own experience i'd say it's the LVM partitions that are causing problems. I personally create all linux partitions beforehand.

[Pirm]

Thanks for the info on ntfs-config.

I got the following when querying sda3:

# ntfs-config -q sda3
Query database for sda3 :

Info for sda3 :
-> MAJOR=8
-> DEV_NUM=2051
-> PARENT=sda
-> SCSI_COMPAT=SATA_SAMSUNG_HD501LJ_S0ZFJ1MQ208940
-> BUS=ata
-> SERIAL_SHORT=S0ZFJ1MQ208940
-> DEV=sda3
-> IGNORE=True
-> SYSFS_PATH=/sys/block/sda/sda3
-> REMOVABLE=False
-> REVISION=CR100-12
-> DEVICE=/dev/sda3
-> PATH=pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0
-> MODEL=SAMSUNG_HD501LJ
-> MODEL_ENC=SAMSUNG\x20HD501LJ\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x 20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20 \x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20
-> TYPE=disk
-> SERIAL=SAMSUNG_HD501LJ_S0ZFJ1MQ208940
-> MINOR=3
-> SIZE=207844599808.0


The query for the recovery partition (sda2) has more info in the filesystem type:

# ntfs-config -q sda2
Query database for sda2 :

Info for sda2 :
-> DEV=sda2
-> FS_DRIVERS={'all': {'ntfs-3g': ['ntfs-3g', 'Read-write driver', 0], 'ntfs': ['ntfs', 'Unknow driver', 0], 'ntfs-fuse': ['ntfs-fuse', 'Read-write driver', 0], 'auto': ['auto', 'Secondary Driver', 0]}, 'primary': [['ntfs-3g', 'Read-write driver', 0], ['ntfs-fuse', 'Read-write driver', 0], ['ntfs', 'Unknow driver', 0]], 'secondary': [['auto', 'Secondary Driver', 0]]}
-> FS_LABEL_ENC=RECOVERY
-> PATH=pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-0:0:0:0
-> MODEL=SAMSUNG_HD501LJ
-> FS_UUID_ENC=2A1EC2EE1EC2B1DD
-> SERIAL_SHORT=S0ZFJ1MQ208940
-> FS_UUID=2A1EC2EE1EC2B1DD
-> BUS=ata
-> FS_LABEL=RECOVERY
-> FS_USAGE=filesystem
-> MODEL_ENC=SAMSUNG\x20HD501LJ\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x 20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20 \x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20\x20
-> DEV_NUM=2050
-> PARENT=sda
-> FS_TYPE=ntfs
-> REMOVABLE=False
-> DEVICE=/dev/sda2
-> SERIAL=SAMSUNG_HD501LJ_S0ZFJ1MQ208940
-> FS_LABEL_SAFE=RECOVERY
-> MINOR=2
-> SIZE=10737418240.0
-> MAJOR=8
-> SCSI_COMPAT=SATA_SAMSUNG_HD501LJ_S0ZFJ1MQ208940
-> IGNORE=False
-> SYSFS_PATH=/sys/block/sda/sda2
-> TYPE=disk
-> REVISION=CR100-12

I tried the System Repair on the windows installation DVD but the C: (vista) wasn't listed. I think it will need to find an existing installation of vista before attempting to repair or restore.

Starting to run out of ideas.

---------- Post added at 06:35 PM CST ---------- Previous post was at 06:31 PM CST ----------

I'll try to get to a command prompt from the windows dvd.

Is it the same fdisk -l ?

Thanks

[errorxp]

i haven't used it myself but there should be a command "diskpart"