I broke it! How can I fix it?

[Collins Richey]

On 9/28/07, C M Reinehr <cmr at amsent.com> wrote:

> When you added the extended partition you rewrote the partition table and I
> suspect that it did so in a way that confounded the Vista boot loader. My
> previous experience with WinXP & Win98 taught me never to use Linux tools to
> manipulate Windows partition. (I was forced to buy a copy of Partition
> Magic.) Then, once the partitions were correct I would install Linux into a
> free partition.
>

I beg to differ. I have found the Ubuntu/Debian partitioner (I believe
parted is used under the covers) to be quite effective and error free
(at least released code is, all bets are off with a development
release) when resizing an NTFS setup. That's what I used 2 1/2 years
ago on my desktop, and I'm still using the results. Also, it is normal
after shrinking an NTFS partition for windows to filesystem check the
partition on the first windows boot. Parted turns on the 'check
required' flag.

The main reason (IMO) that he had difficulty in booting windows is the
missing boot flag. My PC has the same setup with a small recovery
partition (the first actual) partition on the disk) and the main NTFS
area (the second actual partition). But windows in it's great wisdom
has labeled the second partition h/sda1 and the first partition
s/hda2, so fdisk always complains that partitions are out of order.

Until recently, when I had to use the windows stuff for an HP online
Linux class (yes, you read that right, you need a windows PC to take
any remote classes from HP), I seldom boot windows. When I did,
windows wanted to recover the hard drive. After a little puzzlement, I
discovered that somewhere along the way one of my many Linux installs
had marked h/sda2 as the bootable partition. Toggling the flag on
h/sda1 cured the problem.

-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.