[ILUG] Windows Bootloader Recovery

[Niall Walsh]

On Sunday 26 June 2005 18:32, Danny Browne wrote:
First off, I take it a blank password for Administrator booting from your 
Windows cd didn't work?   If not there may be a default password (I had a 
similar problem before and I think I figured out how to get in).
> ok, how would i go about editing grub?
Well if grub is coming up and offering you the chance to do anything, press c 
to get a grub command line and enter "chainloader (hd0,0)+1" if your Windows 
is on C.  When you hit return Windows should boot.
> For some minimal install of linux how would i go about this? i can't access
> my XP installation (obviously) and i have no unallocated space on the hard
> drive. i have two partitions C: and D: both NTFS. Could i use a DOS boot
> disk to fdisk some free space for linux on D: or something?
Assuming:
1.	You have SP2 on your Windows XP, so using the very slow (and dying) 
CaptiveNTFS isn't an option
2.	You don't want to buy a solution (from Paragon afair) for writing to NTFS 
partitions (about €40 again afair)
3.	You don't want complicated instructions.

You could use qtparted (or ntfs-resize) from Knoppix/Kanotix, or you could use 
Partition Magic, anyway to shrink the NTFS partition to make room for a Linux 
install.  Or some Linux installers will allow you to do this as part of the 
installation (a few years ago ASPLinux used to, and may still, have a freely 
redistributable image which did this using a commercial ntfs resizer, I 
suspect many other distros do ntfs resizing during install now). Either 
should be a safe solution, but should is not the same as is so if you don't 
have a backup (and can't make one) I wouldn't do it.

Instead, as I suggested previously, use a copy of grub from cd (or floppy) to 
boot your windows (someone else mentioned Smart Boot Manager which I'm sure 
will work) and then use your windows to fix your master boot record.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

Niall