jeffspen

I have a system with XP and linux (ubuntu) installed on the same drive. I installed XP first and left 40Gb for linux On installing linux I must have changed the XP partition to a swap partition by mistake, although this wasn't used as I created a special swap partition in the linux space. Now, when I boot XP from the GRUB menu, it starts to load and then says "autochck.exe not found" and restarts the computer. This is my setup according to the command fdisk -l: Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160040803840 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 15298 122881153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 15300 19457 33399135 5 Extended /dev/sda5 15301 19424 33126030 83 Linux /dev/sda6 19425 19457 265041 82 Linux swap / Solaris You can see the 256Mb swap partition as part of the extended linux partition. All my files on the XP bit remain intact so a boot from there should work. Will the fdisk command SETTYPE work and if so, how will I use it?

Well, as I'm using Ubuntu, the file explorer shows the icon for sda1 and in it is all my windows stuff just how I left it. It hadn't formatted the space as I'd used another swap partition within the extended (ext3) linux one. As you can see the /dev/sda1 is set to code 82 Linux swap/solaris (as is /dev/sda6 the swap it actually used) I fixed the problem today by using fdisk. I'd researched the commands a bit and got red herringed into the SETTYPE idea. Really it was easier something like sudo fdisk /dev/sda then it asked me which number... I said 1 Then I brought up a list of commands and a help menu (was it m?) I found a command to change the id and I changed 1 from id 82 (swap/solaris) to id 7 NTFS I saved and exited. Restarted linux then rebooted to XP and it worked!!!

i've worked out that /dev/sda1 is the 117Gb windows partition, sda5 is Ubuntu, (Ext3 system) sda6 is a 259Mb swap partition. (I also have 15Mb of free space for some reason...) sdb is the data drive

Hi, I hope that I didn't format the XP partition. It asked me for a swap partition and I made a small one in the space I reserved for linux. Earlier, I tried typing unhide (hd1,x) where x was 0 to 3. It accepted these commands. Although the problem remains - when XP boots, autocheck.exe is not found... Yes, sdb is exactly that, a data drive of NTFS type. I haven't changed any cables or BIOS stuff, main OS drive is first and DATA drive is second.

Hi Danleff, thanks for the response! After doing what you said, I get this: Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160040803840 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 15298 122881153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 15300 19457 33399135 5 Extended /dev/sda5 15301 19424 33126030 83 Linux /dev/sda6 19425 19457 265041 82 Linux swap / Solaris Disk /dev/sdb: 203.9 GB, 203927027200 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 24792 199141708+ 7 HPFS/NTFS I have two SATA drives. One (160Gb) is with a 120Gb Xp partition and rest (40ishGb) is for Ubuntu Linux. The other drive is a 200Gb drive for general stuff.

hi all i'm having a problem along these lines. (and am very much a newbie!) I have a windows xp partition and an ubuntu partition. I've been using the ubuntu for a week or so and am absolutely loving it. I formatted the partitions using the windows and ubuntu installers, not partition magic. I have the autocheck problem with xp as mentioned above. However, the method described is not so simple for me! In grub, I am getting this: grub> unhide (hd0,0) Error 21: Selected disk does not exist so I noted that my windows drive is referred to as sda1 and tried this: grub> unhide (sda1) Error 23: Error while parsing number What am I doing wrong? I hope my problem is as simple to fix as the others here.