Dual Boot Linpus and XP - Idiots' Guide

At the point were I was installing Windows. When the AAO rebooted I had to boot from the HDD. At that point the AAO gives me the error that Windows couldn't boot from the HDD. I'm using the Idiots Guide

 

The linpus version of grub is pretty terrible, where can i get a copy of the Fedora grub suggested by Splatter665 on the idiots guide? Download link would be apprechiated as googling it hasnt helped me...

ps - the idiots guide is excellent.

 

This sounds as if your hard disk partitions / flags/ something is not correct.

Perhaps you can take a screen shot of your partitions using the Gparted USB OS so both DJ_Steve and myself can see how they look.

 

Thanks for the kind words regarding the Guide. DJ_Steve will no doubt be pleased too!

I don't know where the Fedora GRUB can be downloaded but as GRUB is open source it can't be that difficult to find! Try PM-ing either Splatter665 (after all, he has it, perhaps he could post it) or DJ_Steve as our resident Linpus expert.

If someone has it and can post it somewhere (or to me) I'll include it the Idiots' Guide list of files.

 

So sorry guys, but for someone who thinks of himself as a bit of computer freak I am stuck with all this linux stuff.

I have followed the instructions all the way up to the hal.dll error and tried to set the boot flag back to the linpus partition.

However, now the AAO will not boot up, it just sits staring at me with a white flashing cursor in the top left of the screen.

Any suggestions..?

I have been in and out of Gparted so many times now...

Thanks
Richard

 

This sounds as though the GRUB needs to be reinstalled - instructions on the Idiots' Guide Step 15.

However, look at the previous solution DJ_Steve devised (in this thread) concerning the grub.conf file first.

Have you tried to edit the boot.ini on the Windows partition to resolve the hal.dll error? Post the steps you have tried to sort out this error so you can continue loading XP.

 

Thanks for the pointers but I cannot get into the machine anymore.

Well not Linpus anyway.

I can boot off teh pen drive into Gparted but thats it.

Sorry if I am being stupid... But if it does boot into Linpus how do I do AltF2 and enter into a terminal window?

Many thanks
Richard

 

To answer your second question first: press the ALT key and the F2 key together. Type xterm into the pop up window (a bit like the Run command prompt in Windows) and you will then be in a command window (like the cmd window in Windows).

To address your first issue about not being able to boot, you don't have to be able to boot the machine to do this. Boot into the Gparted Linux and close Gparted. Open a terminal window (see above) and access the Windows partition by mounting it. E.g. (guide only):

mkdir temp
mount dev/sda2 temp

At this point the temp directory will have everything in the Windows partition hanging off it. If you now do:

cd temp
dir

you should see the boot.ini file and be able to edit it using the Vi editor (horrible thing but enough to do this. Follow the guide or google on simple Vi command; you only want to change the partition number from 3 to 2 in two places).

PM DJ_Steve if you get stuck or if the above doesn't work for you as I'm trying to remember what I did when I had the same problem. My knowledge of Linux on a scale of 1 to 10 is -1 so if I can do it anyone can!

 

Thank you Thank you Thank you

Well done, I have managed it.

I do not suppose it should be much of a surprise as of this forum.

I will continue to check into the firum from now just to see if I can help anyone.

Aresby, Thank you.

 

GRUB is of course available from http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ ... but u need to compile it first, and it seems pretty extreme to install one and all the other bits that go with it to compile grub.

I also downloaded Fedora live CD ... but appart from booting it up (taking a good 5min from a USB CD player) not had much luck there with extracting it's grub.

Any ideas?

 

I think it is an achievement for anyone to follow the Idiots' Guide, quite frankly! Thanks to DJ_Steve too for supplying the original information and expertise.

But you are most welcome and I am delighted that you can now dual boot your Aspire One. If there is anything you did that could help others please post it so I can include it into the Guide.

 

Finally got mine going again aftyer my little virus problem. Dislodged 2 of the keys on the keyboard in the process and cant get them to reattach. I do have a couple of questions though.
1. What software does the official version with xp use for the webcam.
2. How do I triple boot with OSX. Only want to see how it runs as my brother is interested in getting a AAO and putting it on.

Cheers

 

Yesterday my neighbor (who works wit linux based servers) finally solved the problem. It was something with the boot.ini file, He had to change the Rdisk thing to (0) (it was 1). When he tried to open the mousepad boot.ini in Linpus it was empty. I thougt it was normal. The way he changed it was going into Gparted and changed in that Terminal the boot.ini file


P.S. He doesn't know if the Rdisk thing is the exact problem

Thank DJ_Steve and Aresby for the tutorial. My AAO works now perfect with the drivers from the site.

 

Hurrah! Another success. I wish there was an easier way to sort out that damn boot.ini problem that just about everyone gets.

Perhaps the answer is to sort out the partitions before XP is loaded. Maybe DJ_Steve will comment on that because he arranged his partitions differently I believe and did not have the hal.dll error.

But all's well that ends well!

 

@drno_la

There is no need to download grub, because "yum" does this allready for you. Just follow the guide.

 

I will update the Guide to make this clearer. Splatter665 has given me clarification which I will add to the page on the Guide detailing the exact steps required.

I might even try it out then as I'm fed up pressing that TAB key every time and the Acer version of GRUB looks pretty rubbish as well.

 

Hi guys,

I've had a good look through this thread but can't see the answer to the problem I'm having. I have the problem whereby XP is not listed as the second partition but the third. Unfortunately when going back into Linpus even though I've set it as the boot
the following gives the following error : mount: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs' AFTER entering in the line here>>

mount -t ntfs /dev/sda2 xpdisk (this mounts the XP filestore (disk) under that directory)

By the way, unfortunately I forgot to plug in my charger and the AAO crashed out on me halfway through doing the partition resize! This *may not* have helped....

any thoughts?

Thanks

 

Do you have any access to the XP partition? maybe by the bootloader (grub)?

Maybe the XP partition is broken, because by canceling the shrinking process you may have killed the "Superblock" of the ntfs partition. This happened myself some time ago with gparted. Reinstalling XP helps

 

Hi Splatter.

I tried loading XP and it comes up with a critical stop error message before it does too much. Because I can't get rid of the Linux swap file being #2 I've gone for broke and deleted it! I'm not really too interested in using Linux at all TBH so if I need to get shot of Linux altogether to make my life easier and just have one partition as XP then that will make my life a lot easier. My impressions of Limpus so far are that its doggy do-do!

I can get to the partitions via the usb stick gparted prog.

So I've just got 2 partitions now, linpus at 10gb and xp/ntfs as the rest and set to boot but still I get this stop message. Thing is I'm booting off a Win XP pro CD which has no Service Pack updates on it. I created a XP Pro SP3 image versus nlite but I don't know what file its created for me or where it is. Should I be running that off the memory stick instead of using my cdrom version? If so, how do I go about booting off the nlite version as there's no mention of how to do it in the instructions which just mention it at the beginning and then never again. Is the nlite a bootable version I just need to burn onto a CD-R?

Thanks very much.

 

If your XP partition really was the third partition (dev/sda3) then I was hoping you would not receive the hal.dll error as XP seems to pick that partition number by default. Pity, I thought that might be a solution. Of course, running out of batteries half way through just may have caused an issue or ten, whadya think?!!

Anyway regarding your Nlite version of XP, it will have created an .iso file which you must burn to CD (NOTE: burn it as an image or it will not boot) and then use it as a normal XP install disk in your CD player. If you can't burn from it you've done the burn wrong!

If you REALLY want to get rid of all things Linpus then boot into Gparted using your USB stick, delete ALL partitions, reboot and boot from the XP disk and it will find a brand new, unpartitioned disk and use it all for XP.

In hindsight I think I should have done that instead of kidding myself that Linpus would be, in some way, "useful"!