windows can't boot! (thanks wgl!)

[Yarin]

Now the whole thing locked up when I tried to read one of the system files, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't even do anything. What and where is the equivalent of the Task Manager in fedora?

[Yarin]

What does the output of the mount command say? For example, this is one line of mine:

/dev/sda2 on /mnt/vista type fuseblk (rw,noatime,allow_other,blksize=4096)

See the "rw"? That means it's readable and writable. If yours just says "r" or maybe "ro", then it's mounted read-only. If it says "rw", then you're not editing/deleting files properly.

It didn't say anything, I typed in the mount command and the "[somthing@localhost] #" thingy came up, there was no response. (even though it did do it)

[dwks]

That's strange. What about "cat /etc/mtab"? [edit] This is after you mount the partition, of course.

Now the whole thing locked up when I tried to read one of the system files, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't even do anything. What and where is the equivalent of the Task Manager in fedora?

In Debian, gnome-system-monitor (which can launch from ALT-F2 or from a terminal). But since you were able to run konsole, you're probably using some sort of KDE system. In that case you might try ksysguard. [/edit]

[Yarin]

I did another force shutdown, so it's working again. I'm still going to try to find ksysguard though.

"mount" now includes the line "/dev/sda2 on /mnt type vfat (rw)". Would mounting it as type "fuseblk" instead of "vfat" make it work? If so, how do I change the mount type?

"cat /etc/mtab" returns similar stuff to mount, including the line "/dev/sda2 /mnt vfat rw 0 0".

[brewbuck]

Now the whole thing locked up when I tried to read one of the system files, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't even do anything. What and where is the equivalent of the Task Manager in fedora?

Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't force a reboot quite like it does on Windows. If you're "locked up" in X, try hitting Ctrl-Alt-F2 and see if you get a login prompt. If you do, log in as root and type "shutdown -r now" to reboot cleanly.

Is your Windows filesystem really VFAT? Not NTFS? The VFAT driver is extremely well tested and shouldn't be giving you problems writing to files.

[Yarin]

Both my partitions are FAT32, after getting the computer I was also surprised to not see an NTFS fs. (I'm not sure if thats what VFAT is or not.)

[dwks]

Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't force a reboot quite like it does on Windows. If you're "locked up" in X, try hitting Ctrl-Alt-F2 and see if you get a login prompt. If you do, log in as root and type "shutdown -r now" to reboot cleanly.

CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE is a good way to force X to restart if it's seriously crashed. I'm not sure how healthy this is. Probably not very.

VFAT means FAT32 (and maybe FAT16, I'm not sure). If your partition is a FAT32 one, then your line looks good.

The only thing I can think of is this. Usually, one does not mount something to /mnt. You typically mount things to directories in /mnt, such as /mnt/sda1, /mnt/vista, and so on.

You can try it like this. The "mkdir" command is unnecessary if you use a directory that already exists in /mnt.

# mkdir /mnt/win
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/win

Then, to test if you can write to the partition:

# cd /mnt/win
# ls    # to make sure you're in the right directory
...
# echo Hello, World! > testfile    # creates a file called "testfile"
# cat testfile    # shows the contents of testfile
Hello, World!
# rm testfile    # deletes testfile
# ls testfile    # confirms that testfile has been deleted
testfile: No such file or directory
#

[Yarin]

"# mkdir /mnt/win" and any mkdir command for that matter always fails with the same old access denied error. The OS won't let me write to anything. I have already mounted the partitions to various paths (I did this while transporting my data with the stick onto this desktop) and the same old thing happens.

So, I snapped. I now have XP Home and 2000 Pro running on my laptop, the revamp cleared my data, but at least fedora let me read the data and now my computer doesn't have all the junk that originally came with it. I still need to finish downloading XPSP2 though. And I need to find and download my MB drivers. (no USB ports are working, and my modem drivers doesn't even think a modem is attached)

[Elysia]

If you just install another XP, you should be able to repair the boot.ini file and get access to your old Windows installation.
That should mean you don't need to install any drivers, hopefully.

[Yarin]

No no, I revamped the whole system. The whole hd was formated, then 2000 pro was installed, then XP home.
I wish I would've thought of your idea, but even if I did, it would just make my mess of files even more of a mess. (I only had 2 hd partitions, but now I have 4 )

[Yarin]

Thanks for your help dwks, otherwise, my coding life would've been set back by a few months.

[Elysia]

Well, you should, since these error do tend to occur frequently.
I got some experience not long ago trying to repair XP. I uninstalled Office and it deleted pretty much all of Windows fonts. So when I next rebooted the system, boom! No hal.dll. OK, so I fix that. Boom! Missing file! I reinstall the font! Boom! Windows looks just plain weird because it default to other fonts from the default ones (it used wingdings or some such).
So I had to reinstall the fonts, but the Font folder had stopped working. So I had to repair it using Tweak XP and then reinstall the fonts and reboot and everything worked as it should!

But it helps to have two hard drives too... two boot sectors!

[dwks]

Thanks for your help dwks, otherwise, my coding life would've been set back by a few months.

You're welcome.

"# mkdir /mnt/win" and any mkdir command for that matter always fails with the same old access denied error. The OS won't let me write to anything. I have already mounted the partitions to various paths (I did this while transporting my data with the stick onto this desktop) and the same old thing happens.

It sounds like you simply didn't have the right permissions.

When a partition is mounted in Linux, it's mounted by a specific user. If you mount it as root, then you probably need to be root to write to it. Commands typed at the '#' prompt are run as root. Therefore, you were likely mounting the partition as root, and trying to write to it as your unprivileged login user. (You can often read partitions mounted by other users, but not usually write to them.) I'm sorry I didn't think of this beforehand.

The surest-fire way to mount something as another user that I know of is to mount it as root, unmount it (with a command like "umount /mnt/win"), and then mount it as the user you want it mounted for.

Anyway, it's pretty much irrelevant now, but I just thought I'd mention it.

Four partitions? Did you dedicate one to Linux?

[edit]

Well, you should, since these error do tend to occur frequently.
I got some experience not long ago trying to repair XP. I uninstalled Office and it deleted pretty much all of Windows fonts. So when I next rebooted the system, boom! No hal.dll. OK, so I fix that. Boom! Missing file! I reinstall the font! Boom! Windows looks just plain weird because it default to other fonts from the default ones (it used wingdings or some such).
So I had to reinstall the fonts, but the Font folder had stopped working. So I had to repair it using Tweak XP and then reinstall the fonts and reboot and everything worked as it should!

But it helps to have two hard drives too... two boot sectors!

Okay, I'm biased, but I've never had to boot any of my several Linux systems into a recovery mode or anything. XP and 98 required this several times during the time I was using them.

Also: I'm not sure if "two boot sectors" is the right term. A sector is a portion of the hard drive or other magnetic drive. So maybe "partition" is what you meant. [/edit]

[Elysia]

Each hard disk would have a boot sector, so that essentially makes it two.
Yes, Windows does like to throw tantrums. More than linux it seems!

[dwks]

Umm . . . as far as I can tell, Yarin has only one hard drive, or disk as you say. Therefore, this one disk would have only one boot sector with one master boot record. From there, however, a chain bootloader like grub could boot one of the other partitions, making them in that sense bootable too, I suppose.

[edit] Never mind. I see you introduced the idea of two hard drives yourself.

It's a good idea, by the way. One I've used myself several times. [/edit]