[SOLVED] shrunk XP partition, now there's a disk read error

[xchronox]

I used the ubuntu live cd and gparted to shrink my XP partition... I knew it was risky, but I didn't think it would end this badly...
Basically, after I shrunk the partition, XP lost its boot capabilities. I don't think it has anything to do with grub since grub is pointing towards (hd0,0) where the XP partition is...
I think it's boot.ini but i have not for the life of me been able to find a solution that doesn't involve reinstalling windows.

The exact process I go through to boot is:
I turn on the computer
Grub comes up
I select XP
is goes to a new screen saying "starting up..."
which is immediately followed by:
A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

If anyone has a solution to this that doesn't involve formating I would be forever in their debt.

[Partyboi2]

If you have a windows xp disk boot that and go into recovery and try checking the disk.

chkdsk /r
Another one to try is

fixboot

[xchronox]

thanks for replying so quick :)
I've searched and I can't find a working XP disc. I tried my vista one for my laptop but it didn't have fixboot. I might be able to get one in a few weeks but if there's any other way to fix this...
Maybe if I could somehow get the parameters for the XP boot sector and manually input them into boot.ini, after all my Ubuntu OS is working perfectly at the moment.

[caljohnsmith]

Since you have a Vista install/recovery CD, just use that to run "chkdsk /r" on your Windows XP partition. First try that and report what happens when you boot Windows again, and also post the output of:

sudo fdisk -lu
If the chkdsk is not enough to get Windows going, it is possible to use "testdisk" in linux to fix the Windows partition boot sector similar to "fixboot", assuming a backup one is available in your Windows file system (usually there is one). But try the chkdsk first, let me know what happens, and we can go from there.

[Pumalite]

Try to boot/fix XP with Super Grub:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/SuperGrubDiskPage.html

[xchronox]

hm, when I use the Vista CD "repair this computer" option, it doesn't detect the XP partition as being a windows installation... I can however browse to it with the "load drivers" feature.
if I ignore that and continue onto the command prompt, typing chkdsk /r gives me:

The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Windows Cannot run disk checking on this volume because it is write protected.

So here's the output to fdisk:


Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 133130654 66565296 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 268414020 388564154 60075067+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 388564155 390716864 1076355 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 133130655 268414019 67641682+ b W95 FAT32

Partition table entries are not in disk order

I ran testdisk after this and it seemed to have kinda fixed the bootsector but killed grub, so i ran the SGD and got grub back. Tried to boot windows and it gets stuck on the disk check at:


Deleting an index entry from index $0 of file 25.

I hard booted from that, skipped the diskcheck and now I've gotten into my windows XP OS without any apparent issues.
For the record I use it once in a blue moon for school projects when it calls for specialty software such as the adobe suite...

anyway, it's up and running for now. Thanks for everything. You're all my hero's :)

SOLVED... for now.