Help needed in dual booting with Vista

[Dark Star]

Hi
I recently got a new rig. .Since I didn't have any decent distro with me I thought of installing Vista.. My 4Gb , X3 rig ran Vista like feather..

So I tried installing MDV 2009.0 Gnome in my extended 25gb partition.. But Windows MBR was still there after installing.. I opened Windows and my extended 300+ Gb partitions were missing..

I used test disk to recover them.. Though I still lost few data..

Please help me dual booting with VISTA...I don't wann create a arukus again ! Loosing data is too painfull..

Regards

[ghost at rest]

Do you have LiveCD of any distro? Boot up from LiveCD and post the output of fdisk -l command here.

su -
fdisk -l

[vamsi360]

open computer management and fix them.

Else, use Gparted live CD and convert the partition. It will surely fix it.
As for dual booting, install easybcd and add mandriva to vista's boot loader. Donot reformat everything!

[Dark Star]

Originally Posted by ghost at rest

Do you have LiveCD of any distro? Boot up from LiveCD and post the output of fdisk -l command here.

su -
fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x0009e36e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 * 1 3952 31742976 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda2 3953 4717 6144862+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda3 4718 20397 125949600 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda4 20398 77825 461290410 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

/dev/sda5 20398 52329 256493758+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda6 52330 64506 97811721 7 HPFS/NTFS

/dev/sda7 64507 77825 106984836 7 HPFS/NTFS

No the last extended partition. There was 266 Gb of partition, which i broke it into 240~ and 25~ / I installed MDV in 25 Gb and has an additional swa earlier..



Now when I restart no Grub and extended partitions gone !

[ghost at rest]

/dev/sda4 20398 77825 461290410 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)

Partition Structure looks good to me. /dev/sda4 is an Extended Partition and it contains other Logical Partitions.

I would suggest you to re-install GRUB through SuperGRUB LiveCD. Download its .iso image from here, burn to CD and boot up from it. Select Fix Linux Boot Loader (GRUB) option.
USB and Floppy images are also available there.

[Dark Star]

I removed the partitions.. Any further suggestion on how to install it again so that I won't mess my part. table ?

[ghost at rest]

Could you post output of sudo fdisk -l command again? It will help us to suggest you correctly.

[Dark Star]

Its same re.. The above posted here is taken after I removed the partitions..

[Dark Star]

Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0009e36e

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        3952    31742976    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3953        4717     6144862+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3            4718       20397   125949600    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4           20398       77825   461290410    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           52330       64506    97811721    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6           64507       77825   106984836    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7           20398       24538    33262519+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8           24539       52329   223231176    7  HPFS/NTFS

Installed F10 from LFY dvd , though I didn't lost my partitions but no grub yet.. Have restored it through Ubuntu Live CD lets see if it works ? I installed the Grub in 1'st sector of HDD ? Should I install it in MBR ?

Restoring Grub fixed everything, though I removed F10 , having same problem with Plymouth and Grub !