how to recover from this partition table

[FerdinandoPucci]

Hi all,
I have messed up the mbr partition scheme on my macbook and I'm not able to sync it neither with refit. Here is the report from refit partiion inspector tool:

*** Report for internal hard disk ***

Current GPT partition table:
# Start LBA End LBA Type
1 40 409639 EFI System (FAT)
2 409640 115490855 Mac OS X HFS+
3 115490856 136517767 EFI System (FAT)
4 136779919 156301454 EFI System (FAT)

Current MBR partition table:
# A Start LBA End LBA Type
1 1 409639 ee EFI Protective
2 409640 115490855 af Mac OS X HFS+
3 * 115490856 136517767 83 Linux
4 1 156301454 ee EFI Protective

MBR contents:
Boot Code: Unknown, but bootable

Partition at LBA 40:
Boot Code: None (Non-system disk message)
File System: FAT32
Listed in GPT as partition 1, type EFI System (FAT)

Partition at LBA 409640:
Boot Code: None
File System: Unknown
Listed in GPT as partition 2, type Mac OS X HFS+
Listed in MBR as partition 2, type af Mac OS X HFS+

Partition at LBA 115490856:
Boot Code: GRUB
File System: ext3
Listed in GPT as partition 3, type EFI System (FAT)
Listed in MBR as partition 3, type 83 Linux, active

Partition at LBA 136779919:
Boot Code: Windows NTLDR
File System: FAT32
Listed in GPT as partition 4, type EFI System (FAT)

Linux boots but windows doesn't anymore. I think that if I get the mbr table back to a correct state I will be able to boot win again. How can I procede?

Thanks!

Ferdinando

[cyberdork33]

i don't really see anything wrong.

Can you give more information about what happens when you attempt to boot windows? Take us step by step what you do.

[FerdinandoPucci]

Thank you for the reply.

I supposed that it is wrong to have the GPT partition start and end points different from those in the MBR table. Isn't this that gptsync corrects?

I had just updated the EFI from apple updates but it didn't installed the update since the partition scheme is MBR (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303609).

When I boot windows GRUB starts and shows the linux and windows partition. Once I choose windows(XP), its splash screen appears and suddenly the system reboots.

Linux boots fine.

any suggestion on how to procede?

thanks again
Ferdinando

[cyberdork33]

Thank you for the reply.

I supposed that it is wrong to have the GPT partition start and end points different from those in the MBR table. Isn't this that gptsync corrects?

I had just updated the EFI from apple updates but it didn't installed the update since the partition scheme is MBR (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303609).

When I boot windows GRUB starts and shows the linux and windows partition. Once I choose windows(XP), its splash screen appears and suddenly the system reboots.

Linux boots fine.

any suggestion on how to procede?

thanks again
Ferdinando
I see what you are saying now. The EFI updates require an EFI partition to store the data.

I'd say it is a problem with windows because the partition format has changed (or something like that). It is crashing and reboots because of this. You might be able to change the boot.ini file somehow, but if push comes to shove, you might just pull the data off that you need and reinstall.

You can try looking at the partition table with parted (or gparted) to see if things are screwy there. If nothing else, fdisk pays no attention to the GPT, so it will read/modify ONLY the MBR

[russo.mic]

Well Hold the phone, before you start reinstalling, why don't you just try booting off the Vista CD, repair option, select the recovery console and type:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

This will attempt to restore the vista bootloader. Now, this could mean that you would be able to restore the Vista partition, but not be able to boot into the Linux! Still grub is pretty easy to restore.

I'm pretty sure that if you reinstall Vista, you'll render linux unable to be booted into until you restore grub anyway.

Just giving you some choices!

Good Luck! Post your results.

Russo

[ronocdh]

I'm with russo. I've done similar things to my PTs before and been able to resolve them most of the time by reinstalling the MBR via Windows (XP) disc, then resetting up GRUB from an Ubuntu CD.

[mrsteveman1]

Fixmbr only updates the boot code in the first 446 bytes of a drive. OS X ignores the executable code in the MBR anyway unless all other boot options have been exhausted, and fixmbr doesn't actually touch the partition entries so it won't fix those if thats what you need to do.

When the tables are so out of sync that gptsync wont fix it, the best thing to do is perhaps to zero out the mbr and get something to write a new one, or write one yourself manually with fdisk.

I've had to do this before, it's not the easiest thing in the world but it works. If you don't want to do that and if the tables are significantly screwed up, it would be easier to just save your data and reinstall everything.