dual booting into winxp using grub problem

[mjlior]

Hello,

i had a winxp pro and installed fc5. in the installation of grub i've chosen that grub will be located in the mbr. i have a single hd.
the partitions look like this now:
hda4[ntfs] ~30GB (winxp )
hda1[ext3] ~100MB (/boot )
hda2[swap] ~256MB (swap )
hda3[ext3] ~10GB (/ )

when grub's trying to boot winxp i get this:
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
chainloader +1

NTLDR is missing

i won't trouble you with all the things i've tried. none of them im proved my condition.
does anyone have any idea why this happened and how to fix it?
needless to say i (really) don't want to format my ntfs partition.

thanks for the help

[Saint Mike]

Hey, NTLDR is the windows NT kernal loader it should be on your C drive in windows

I dont think this is right "rootnoverify (hd0,4)", i think thats pointing it to the 4th partition

try the following

su -
fdisk /dev/hda
p
q

and show the partition table in here

will look something like this

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        7833    62918541    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            7834        7846      104422+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            7847       13901    48636787+  8e  Linux LVM
/dev/hda4           13902       14593     5558490    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5           13902       14593     5558458+   b  W95 FAT32

[tomcat]

Your Windows XP is residing on hd0,3, not hd0,4.

[Saint Mike]

woops didnt notice the partition numbers on your drives

[mjlior]

this is what fdisk shows:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5168 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 2 3814 28826280 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda2 * 3815 3828 105840 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 3829 3863 264600 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda4 3864 5168 9865800 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 2 3814 28826248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fdisk for dos shows me about the same thing. i understood from it that the ntfs partition is actually an extended partition residing is the first partition (i guess hda5 resides in hda1).
using the winxp recovery console i've found out that the files 'ntldr', 'ntdetect.com' and 'boot.ini' don't exist in 'C:'
this is very strange considering the fact that my winxp boot ok before the fc5 installation. for some weird reason they've disappeared.
i was able to copy 'ntldr', 'ntdetect.com' to 'C:' from the winxp installation cd but am now trying to create a 'boot.ini' in the same dir. i don't know if that will resolve the problem but i'm sure that the windows won't boot without a 'boot.ini' file.

anyone knows how can i create a file and write to it in an ntfs partition?
anyone has any idea what's going on and why this happened?
one idea that came to mind that the winxp ran (before the fc5 installation) from an extended partition (and not a primary one) and that what made this whole mess.

please help me. thanks.

[Saint Mike]

Hmm i dont think that would have happened, you havnt been mucking about with the new windows vista CTP's? because they have a differant boot setup.

You can boot your XP cd and choose to "repair" a windows install but that will write over Grub, this shouldnt be too hard to fix using the fedora recovery CD to reinstall grub.

I cant see how these files would magically vanish though, seems odd

It is wierd that your first partition is a entended partition too.