changing partition type to fix XP boot crisis

[jeffspen 0]

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?

 

[danleff 0]

How do you know that the files on the partition are intact?

 

The reason that I ask, is if you changed the partition to swap, then the partition should have been written (formatted) over as a swap partition.

 

Also, which fdisk are you speaking of, the Linux fdisk, or DOS fdisk command?

 

If you really were able to see your partition files with some utility, I would be interested what utility you saw them with.

[jeffspen 0]

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!!!

 

[atekigrl 0]

This is the reason why I decided to have a refurb pc to test FD5 instead of partition my hdd. This'd be the next step once I've master the new os.