RE: forwarded message from Thierry Laronde

[Graeme Vetterlein]

Andries,

I am the user reporting the original problem ... the nettiquete on the
quoting
is starting to lose me ... several breaks. I hope the snippet below is a
correct quote
from you:

AB> (More precisely: The four primary partitions are always numbered,
AB> and always numbered in table order.  The logical partitions are
AB> numbered in chain order.  If the chain zigzags over the disk,
AB> then chain order will differ from sector order.
AB> Neither Linux nor DOS has any objection against zigzagging chains.)


The original problem is that W2K would not boot. Specifically it gave the
message: 

        windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing
or corrupt: <windows 2000 root>/system32/ntoskrnl.exe


As you could see from the various fdisk outputs the w2k partition was in the
fourth entry
of the MBR (i.e. entry No 3 ... using zero based numbers) However the the
boot.ini file
on the W2K filesystem said:


[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect


...I'm no W2K expert, but that partition(1)  does not sound like 4 or 3 ...I
think when W2K
says partition(1) it means 'the first non-empty partition' ... thus when
extra partitions
are added it is no longer the first non-empty entry.  THUS I suspect W2K
does have a problem
with zig-zagging chains as extra (non empty) partions appear the 'W2K name'
for itself keeps
changing.

BTW: I think you might have picked up on a question I asked about
terminology ... since the terms
people use here seem to differ a lot (slot No, entry, partition No etc, zero
based one based etc)
I suspect this is at the root of a lot of confusion.


FYI; I 'cloned' the disk [roir to install so I still have the 'before' image
as well as the 'after' image.

--

Graeme




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