WinXP setup doesn't see HDD on an opensuse installed system

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1

Hi,
I was using opensuse and winxp pro with grub’s dualboot option. But I had a problem on WinXp and needed to reinstall winxp. When I boot with setup cd of WinXp pro, it gives error at the begining of installation when it ask about the disk partition to choose a place to winxp on my hdd.
The error message starts “a problem has been detected and windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer” and continue with CHKDSK suggestion.
I tried to format old winxp partition with some bootcd utilities, and tried another winxp cds, but didn’t work again.
Does it require to format all linux partition and installing first winxp then openesuse? All my data are in linux partition, it’ll be hard to do that for me.

Here is fdisk -l result:

linux-sff7:/home/baris # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc51bc51b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        7831    62902476    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           38783       38913     1052257+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda3            7832       38782   248613907+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            7832        8093     2104483+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            8094       10704    20972826   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           10705       38782   225536503+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Thanks

2

The error code on xp installation is : STOP: 0x0000007B (OxF8968640, 0xC0000034, 0X00000000, 0x00000000)

So googled it and found this page:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic45247.html

I changed the SATA device mode in BIOS as IDE instead of AHCI. I got an warning from the bios saying I might need to reinstall os on installed hdd. Then tried to reisntall xp it worked, but opensuse didn’t see the hdd.

Is it something related with “master boot record”? How can I fix mbr with opensuse livecd?

3

Try first to run all the updates on xp, once that’s done you can switch back to AHCI in the BIOS. I suppose you can use yast in the live-version to reinstall GRUB.

4

Nope, it didn’t work. Everytimeto swith between two OS (windows xp and opensuse)I have to change the SATA mode settings in the bios.

5

Hi,

I had the same problem and resolved it like this:

First I installed another windows (once Windows 2000 and in another case Server 2003). After that I installed Windows XP without any problems formating the partition where the other windows installation was.

Do you have enough RAM? I recommend virtual box for running windows under Linux. :wink:

hth

Erik

6

I also recommend VirtualBox for windows.
win xp doesnt have drive for sata harddrives, you can add this driver with nLite
check out

http://pcblogger.net/tutorials/44-operatingsystem/110-add-drivers-to-your-windows-xp-installation-cd.html

or try to download XP cd that already supports sata drives.

7

As I remember, I don’t dualboot XP today, XP had support for SATA with SP2, my old XP-CD from 2001 of course hadn’t. Maybe have yast resetup Grub with mode set to AHCI will do the trick, it’s two years since I got it working in 10.3 so I don’t remeber all details. And as suggested, if you don’t use XP for 3D-gaming, running XP in VirtualBox is far better than dualbooting. But I would recommend you to wait until 11.2 is released before doing that switch, and that is just weeks away now.