Thinkpads Forum

I wanted to make a backup of my system since picked up an expansion bay dvd writer at local computer show. My T30 has a rescue image created by the college I used to go to. I can't do F11 due to GRUB. Installed RnR from Software Updater and rebooted my T30. I see the F11 option and welcomed to a "GRUB: _ (blinking cursor)" display.

Reinstalled GRUB from the Fedora rescue disc and do my usual "configfile /grub/grub.conf" to get the GRUB menu. GRUB appeared to have installed fine. I tell it boot XP and I get RnR instead. It looks like RnR has hijacked the XP bootloader. I can use GRUB to get to Fedora without issue but everytime I tell it to boot XP, I get RnR. What should I do to get rid of RnR?

Machine Background
IBM T30 Type 2366
40 Gb HD upgraded to 100Gb (had to use GParted to image the drive since Ghost can't deal with ext3 partitions)
WinXP \ FC5
512 MB ram

You probably just need to change the partition number in your GRUB menu.lst file to point to the Windows XP partition.

Could you post the end section of your GRUB menu.lst file (the part that lists the different operating systems to boot). Also, please post the partition layout of your disk. In Fedora, typeas the root user and post the results.

I really do think RnR from IBM Software Updater did something to my XP boot files.

#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2157_FC5)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2157_FC5.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2145_FC5)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2145_FC5 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2145_FC5.img
title Win XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,3)
chainloader +1
title Rescue
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
parttype (hd0,3)
unhide(hd0,3) 0xc
chainloader +1

and fdisk -l
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 10446 83907463+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 10447 10460 112455 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 10461 11722 10137015 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda4 11723 12161 3522960 1c Hidden W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda5 10461 11658 9622903+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 11659 11722 514048+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
[root@localhost ~]#

Well.....interesting. It looks like you're doing everything correctly for booting Windows XP. You have XP installed in primary partition 1 and the partition set as active, and you're hiding the Rescue partition (primary partition #4) from Windows when booting. Your GRUB commands for booting XP look correct:What looks incorrect to me are the GRUB commands for starting into the Rescue partition. The partition type code, 0x0c, is supposed to be on the line with the parttype command. Also, there is a space missing after the unhide command. This is how it should look:But none of this explains why XP doesn't boot when you select it.

You could try this next. Restart the machine and when the GRUB screen appears, press 'ESC' to stop the 10-second timer. Then press "c" followed by Enter to get to a GRUB command prompt. Then enter each of the commands for booting XP one at a time as shown above. Take note of any text or error messages that appear when you do this. After entering the last command (chainloader +1), enter "boot" to start XP and see what happens.

**Moderators - maybe this belongs in the Linux section **

Already tried GRUB boot of XP line by line (for me, GRUB boots in console mode by default - a side effect from the GParted migration) and rewarded with the same result: a Thinkvantage loading bar at the bottom of the screen then RnR. This is why I feel RnR has hijacked the XP boot. If I use RnR's file backup utility, I can see that the files are still there or to be specific the folder structure. What I would like to do is access my XP partition and RnR to uninstall. Is there some boot disc that will let me do this? For that matter, can I do it with the Admin account turned off (my login has admin rights but the Administrator account is disabled I believe)?

Then perhaps the partition boot record (PBR) is missing for partition #1. For XP, the PBR is supposed to start NTLDR, which begins the startup process for Windows XP.

You can restore the PBR if you have a Windows XP disc. Boot from the disk and then choose to start the Recovery Console. You'll need to know the administrator password, however. Once the recovery console has started, confirm the drive letter of the Windows XP installation. It will probably be C:

Then, from the console, type the following:Substitute the correct drive letter if needed. This step will restore the PBR for your Windows partition. (Don't do fixmbr because that will replace the Master Boot Record, overwriting GRUB.)

I'm not certain of this, but if you let the machine start up into the R&R environment, is there a way to do this without a WinXP CD? Anybody?

Borrowed a XP cd from the college I'm at. Rescue Console popped up
C:\minint
and
C:\WINDOWS

I'm guessing minint is where RnR is hiding. Selected C:\WINDOWS as the directory I wanted to work on and it asked for admin pw. If I remember correctly, when I originally got this laptop from my school, we set up an administrator, created a personal user account with admin rights then disabled\deleted the Administrator account. So I have no passwork for Administrator.

Now what?

I was thinking since INSERT live cd can read NTFS, use that to poke around? But I'm not sure how to go about doing that. I don't want use any method that would change the Administrator password in case there's a locked file. I did see something about an account recovery service that could take up to 2 days for free service.

If your user account has administrative rights then your password should work.

I will try again. I thought of something while I was driving to class. I still have the original 40 GB HD from when I upgraded during the summer. I was thinking I could boot off of that and place the 100 GB that is giving me trouble in an USB enclosure and hopefully make changes or at lease grab files off that way.

I thought of something else also. Maybe your partition boot record is OK and the problem is simply that the boot.ini file got changed. In thinking about what your machine is doing, I couldn't see how it could attempt to boot into Windows in partition 1 and end up booting into the RnR program that's located in partition 4 unless the boot.ini file in partition 1 is telling it to do so.

Can you read NTFS files in Linux? If so, boot into Fedora and mount hda1 as read-only and try to get a copy of the boot.ini file that's in the root of the partition and post it here.

Here's an example from my machine:If yours has more than one OS listed or lists a partition other than partition(1), then that's the problem.

If you can't extract the file in Linux, your other idea will work just fine. Boot XP from your original hard drive and put your 100GB drive in a USB enclosure. You should then be able to grab a copy of boot.ini from the external drive, but remembering that you'll have to set Windows Explorer to view both hidden and system files to see it.

In any event, this should be easy to fix once the problem is identified. It should not be necessary to reformat and reinstall.

any harm on running scandisk on the 100GB while it is in the USB enclosure? Also how do I find boot.ini on the 100GB?

Probably not.

Boot.ini is in the root of the drive but it's a hidden, system file. If your external USB drive mounts as D:, then it's at D:\boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (#1)" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (#2)" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional (#3)" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

ran scandisk with "automatically fix file system errors" and it could not get passed phase 2, doing one more scan just to see if it happens again. I'm going to delete everything except the first line under [operating systems]. Somewhere, RnR 3 is being started in front of or on top of XP, that's my guess. I should be more careful what I download with the Software Updater

my password didn't work for recovery console.

Is there anyway to run fixboot on a drive in a USB\firewire enclosure?

UPDATE: Ran scandisk without issue, edited boot.ini as mentioned above and I'm still booting into ThinkVantage RnR 3. After telling GRUB to boot XP, the screen flashes with Setup is checking hardware then a loading bar like the one use after coming out of hibernate but it's labeled Thinkvantage.

lostbaka:

I still don't see the smoking gun here. Even though you have several entries in boot.ini that don't belong, the default entry is correctly pointing to your WinXP installation on partition 1. The other entries reference installations of XP on partition 2 on a drive connected to the IDE slave channel, so perhaps you had two disks connected to your machine at one time?

I'm still not seeing how this boots into the RnR environment in partition 4!

If you're adventurous, try renaming the file "ntldr" on your 100 GB drive to "ntldr.bak" when it is in the USB enclosure. This file is also in the root of the drive along with boot.ini and others. Then put the drive back as the primary drive and try booting from it. If everything is set up properly on partition 1, when you attempt to boot into WinXP from GRUB, everything should come to a screeching halt and you should see the error message "NTLDR is missing..."

If you see that message, then at least you know that GRUB is starting up into WinXP in partition 1, and that the partition boot record is set up correctly.

A quick observation. remember when I said the XP cd saw two XP systems, minint and WINDOWS. Minint is where RnR v3 is residing. This is only a guess because the splash screen of RnR v3 is located in a subdirectory of minint. What would happen if I delete minint? Is there anyway to redirect XP to boot WINDOWS?

I will try the ntldr.bak later. Just to see what would happen. I copied the ntldr from the 40 GB to 100 GB but it continued to load RnR v3. I'm thinking XP is loading but RnR v3 is being called instead

UPDATE 9/13/06:
It appears that a WinPE environment is loading. The minint folder should've been a dead giveaway. I'm tempted to remove or rename to see what happens

OK, I think I'm starting to understand now. I had never heard of "minint" before, so I went searching for information. As you've also figured out, it's a folder that's used in the Windows PE environment. Is the \minint folder that you are referring to currently residing in the Windows XP partition (#1 on your disk)?

If it's in partition 1, then according to this article Utimaco SafeGuard
When IBM's Rescue and Recovery software is installed on a hard disk without an IBM_SERVICE partition the following default settings apply for it:
* The IBM Rescue and Recovery environment is installed on a virtual partition on the workstation's hard disk C: partition (primary partition of the master hard disk).
* The virtual partition contains the two folders \minint and \preboot. These two folders are protected by IBM's Rescue and Recovery.

So it appears that when you installed RnR, the installer didn't detect your IBM Service partition and instead created the virtual partitioning scheme, which apparently has gone wacko and is preventing you from booting normally. Your idea of removing the \minint folder might work, but I'd also try removing \preboot if it's also present in the root of your main partition.

However, I have no experience with the WinPE environment, and I'm quickly getting in over my head now, so I'd advise you to contact IBM to ask for their advice on how to fix this.

To be on the safe side I renamed both folders. Reboot with 100GB harddrive "txt-something.sif corrupted error 14"

IBM will probably tell me to send it in, for a charge then will probably image it. I can still access the drive so if comes to that i'll just move the files to dvd or another hd.

Instead of having IBM re-image the machine, if it comes to that, can you do it yourself?

After safely storing away your files, can you boot into the real Service Partition (#4) and perform a repair install or a complete reinstall?

I wish you the best of luck. Originally I thought that you might be having only a simple boot problem with GRUB but it turned out to be much more complicated. I hope I didn't lead you too far astray. I've learned a lot here by trying to help; thanks!

I'm glad that you've tried to help me. I gave IBM a shot to see if they could fix it and they said image it or see an authorized service shop.

This really is more of a Windows problem.

So my plans are:
Find answer without reimage. If reimaging is only solution, copy as much to dvd\network. (Does RnR3 have an uninstall program that can be run outside of Add\Remove Programs?)

Find software that isn't so pervasive that will let me image my hd to DVD, maintaining linux\XP

I need to learn more about the boot process for XP. There's a file called peldr where ntldr is as well. What makes a computer call ntldr, or in my case peldr? How the fudge did peldr take precedence over ntldr? etc, etc...

I really wish fixboot and fixmbr weren't locked away on the XP disc. I'm still puzzled as to why there's an actual Administrator account still on my computer.

UPDATE: Renamed peldr to bakpeldr and now it says ntldr is missing

I gave IBM a shot to see if they could fix it and they said image it or see an authorized service shop.

What a cop-out on IBM's part! Certainly there must be a way to fix the partition boot record, and they should be interested enough to help you recover from their application's screwup. From what you're describing, it's simply referencing peldr instead of ntldr for the boot program.

All of that "magic" is in the PBR in the first few sectors of the partition. See this NTFS.com article. The called program is encoded there. Using fixboot would replace these sectors with the code to start NTLDR as in a standard Windows XP installation. You could do this if you could only gain access to the administrator account with the XP recovery console. Perhaps you can search for information on how to use the recovery console when you don' t know the admin account password?

I can certainly help you with your question about backup solutions. I gave up on RnR last year because of its hit on system performance and the numerous bugs and its inability to handle linux partitions.

My preferred solution is Acronis True Image, which has no hit on performance and does understand Linux partitions. I can make a complete image of my 60 GB disk in about 15 minutes, and the image contains all of the partitions on the disk including Windows and Linux. I can store the image on the local disk in a separate partition for the same capability as RnR (restore in the field). I can also store images on the network or on an external hard drive.

I strongly suggest you look into this program. It's the best backup solution that I've ever used.

**Edit** What happens if you rename peldr to peldr.bak and then rename ntldr to peldr?

PROGRESS: rename ntldr to peldr and you guess it, good ol' XP.

UPDATE 1: Uninstalled RnR now it says NTLDR is missing. It's progress, right?

Will edit\add later

Aha! I meant to warn you that if that worked, the first thing you should do is create an account named "Administrator" and set a password so that you could subsequently repair the partition (fixboot) with the XP CD if needed.

Sounds like you're on your way to recovery now.

plan:
get acronis true image and maybe disk suite
image the crap out of my T30 to dvd
run fixboot and hope it doesn't do harm to my baby

Had to ask a friend how to change admin pass
start -> run -> control userpassword2

normal system...here i come?

If you don't mind one more word of advice -- don't use Acronis True Image to save directly to DVD. Instead save the image to another machine on your network or to an external hard drive. It's not only more reliable but much, much faster (15 minutes for a 7 GB image file vs. hours). You can then make DVDs out of the image file if you want a duplicate copy of the backup.

Hi,

Hope I'm not too late. I have 2 observations: all, one, or none of which may be helpful to you.

I have an Ubuntu, WinXP setup, and I've done all manner of weird things to my RnR partition. It may be there, it may not--I certainly haven't used it, ever. My WinXP partition has all my important stuff, and the Ubuntu one a special Matlab setup...

Anyways, I foolishly let it just upgrade to RnR 3, and was greeted like you were with a dumbfounding "GRUB" blank screen. Typically, I had around 7 different options, including a Win XP (that had been autocreated. NOTE!! if you booted it, it gives you the RnR WinXP bootup. Ii am not incorrect, this is why there were 2 WinXP partitions showing up) and a Win XP Pro that is the real OS.

So, having been here before (but no longer having a Linux wizard as a housemate) I fired up the bbs, and looked a bit. My options boiled down to 3 things: repair with a WinXP disk (dangerous), Fix GRUB with a Knoppix boot first (safe, as good as I can hope to get, but 600megs away...), use the IBM MBR fixer.

I used the IBM MBR Fixer. It is a ~1.5mb iso, so quick, and it fixed the mbr s.t. Windows (the important part) worked. What remains is to: check that RnR hasn't erased my partitions to install its silly software, and fix GRUB if possible so that I don't lose a priceless linux setup (all with the Knoppix ISO).

In any case, if your windows partition is important to you, you might try letting the IBM tool "fix" (but not "replace") your MBR. I'm just saying all this because it rings a bell.

gl