booting into IBM recovery partition

[shriramrs31]

While installing kubuntu 8.10 i overwrote the MBR with GRUB and now I am unable to boot into recovery partition to restore my original windows xp installation.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_and_Recovery details a procedure and according to it, I have the following entires in grub file

title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
makeactive


title IBM Rescure and Recovery
root (hd0,1)
parttype (hd0,1) 0x0b
unhide (hd0,1)
chainloader /bootsect.dos
makeactive

If i select this entry to boot, all i get is the message "starting up..... Boot disk failure". I cannot boot into my windows (see my previous thread) bcos something happened to it during resize.

If i mount the partition manually in kubuntu (/dev/sda2 filesystem:vfat), i could see some files including the bootsect.dos

can someone help me boot into this recovery partition so that i can restore it back to original status ?

thanks a lot

Ram

[Qqmike]

Re: booting into IBM recovery partition

If the boot sector in (hd0,1) is the first sector of that partition, just wondering if this might work:

title IBM Rescure and Recovery
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Or:

title IBM Rescue and Recovery
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1 --force

(not sure if you need makeactive?)

(ps -- I have no experience with this IBM recovery stuff)

[shriramrs31]

Re: booting into IBM recovery partition

I tried this directly during boot in grub, by pressing 'e' and then 'b' after changes. Is this okay or should i boot into linux, change menu.1st and install grub everytime ?

So all these tries, including a lot of other combination that i could come up with did not work.

I had a USB Live GPartEd which showed this partition as hidden, i unchecked this flag, and it became automatically boot partition. I restarted again and tried lots of combinations with grub, but nothing works. The same message "boot disk failure".

The partition is intact. I can see the data when i mount it manually. I guess there must be some way to boot into this or ? If GRUB cant do it, I cant imagine anything else capable of doing it.

[Qqmike]

Re: booting into IBM recovery partition

If (hd0.1) is bootable, if there is a bootloader in sector 1 of (hd0,1), then yes, GRUB should boot it by chailoading and we have both tried to do here.

But you do know that GRUB works because you can boot into Kubuntu, right?

And, if you try to boot into XP in (hd0,0), that does not work because, as you say, something in XP got broken after a partition-edit or some such?

(Hope a Windows recovery CD is not called for here! -- Have you googled to try to find such? some sort of fee recovery CD download?)

[Qqmike]

Re: booting into IBM recovery partition

I'm reading your link -- and answering some of my own questions!

[Qqmike]

Re: booting into IBM recovery partition

Quote: Some people reported this not working (in particular, on a Z61m 9450-3HG). Version 4.0 of Rescue and Recovery uses an NTFS partition, so a partition type of 0x07 (HPFS/NTFS) may be needed [End Quote]

Did you also catch that?


I read the link, quickly. Looks like you have read it also. Your menu.lst entries are correct (your first post).
Hmmm ... don't know. If you did not need that partition (hd0,1), you could delete it and use a regular XP recovery disk to rebuild a normal XP MBR; but you need the R & R partition (hd0,1) to fix your XP!
Actually, if you didn't have the (hd0,1), we could just reset GRUB and boot XP easily, if XP is not broken.

Maybe some Windows guys will catch this thread and have an idea..

[shriramrs31]

Re: booting into IBM recovery partition

Vow, glad to see you put so much effort into this and making me feel better that I am not alone

I tried the part type NTFS 0x07, even though i saw that the partition type is vfat(gparted) and i mounted it as a vfat partition to see all the files in it. So the type 7 doesn't work.

I think IBM has done something else in its newer rescue and recovery software suite booting process. Because there is no combination from grub options that boots into this partition. Or maybe I did something else. I have no idea as of now.

Also this is my work laptop and my admin is already quite frustrated that I made all the time he spent installing default applications and SP3 in windows XP useless. So I dont want to waste any more time in trying to something heroic :P (as he says :P )

I just found out that one of my colleagues has the same laptop, so made some recovery discs from his and trying it out in mine now. so far no problem.

I guess my not being able to boot into the recovery partition will always remain a mystery

I am perfectly happy with just Linux in my laptop, but some proprietary devices we use come with just a windows XP driver & software.

Thanks a lot for you effort. And this time since i have my recovery discs already, I guess i wont be needing this recovery partition anymore.