CentOS - Nov 2007 - Dual boot box: WinXP & CentOS 5: Impossible to restore WinXP?

We rarely use M$ Windows, but I let my daughter surf pbskids.org while
using Windows and a Trojan Horse modified or deleted the user32.dll
file. I found the instructions on the Microsoft Support web site, and
it would be very easy for me to expand a new copy of user32.dll if I
could get the MS WinXP CD to work. It boots OK, I press a key so it
will search hardware and it then has hard drive activity for a long,
long time. My impression is that Microsoft does not want this to work
on dual boot boxes.

I've tried this on dual boot boxes with Windows ME and Windows 98 SE
and it works fine. Dell sent me two (2) new WinXP CDs (one in English
and one in Spanish) but the problem apparently  is not that I have a
defective WinXP CD from Dell.

Has anyone been able to restore WinXP on a dual boot box? TIA!
-- 
Lanny
---------------------------------------------------------
Over 800 Magazine titles up to 85% off
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On Nov 18, 2007 4:12 PM, Lanny Marcus <lannyma at gmail.com>
wrote:
> We rarely use M$ Windows, but I let my daughter surf pbskids.org while
> using Windows and a Trojan Horse modified or deleted the user32.dll
> file. I found the instructions on the Microsoft Support web site, and
> it would be very easy for me to expand a new copy of user32.dll if I
> could get the MS WinXP CD to work. It boots OK, I press a key so it
> will search hardware and it then has hard drive activity for a long,
> long time. My impression is that Microsoft does not want this to work
> on dual boot boxes.
>
> I've tried this on dual boot boxes with Windows ME and Windows 98 SE
> and it works fine. Dell sent me two (2) new WinXP CDs (one in English
> and one in Spanish) but the problem apparently  is not that I have a
> defective WinXP CD from Dell.
>
> Has anyone been able to restore WinXP on a dual boot box? TIA!
Hi

I remember a got this problem multiple time. The XP CD (and also self made
autoinstall CD) was refusing to boot if the HD was allready partitioned with
an "incompatible" fdisk tool. It was usually on test machine and I had
not problem doing a
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512
and then reinstall all the machine from scratch, or if the installed
OS were important
then I used some imaging or backup tools. But the reset of the
partition was mandatory.

You could try to use the very powerful BartPE live CD do restore your DLL.

> --
> Lanny
> ---------------------------------------------------------
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> http://lowcostmagazines.com/
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-- 
Alain Spineux
aspineux gmail com
May the sources be with you

On Nov 18, 2007 1:05 PM,  <gjgowey at tmo.blackberry.net>
wrote:
> Have you disconnected all your usb hardware before trying the repair? 
I've repaired my box >more times than I can count and the only time
I've seen lots of hdd activity is when I had some >weird hardware
attached.
Geoff: Thank you for this information. On this box, there's no USB
attached at this time. In the future, what you wrote might come in
handy! The only things connected now are the monitor, keyboard,
speakers, mouse and a printer connected via Parallel cable. Lanny

On 18 November 2007, Alain Spineux aspineux at gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
>I remember a got this problem multiple time. The XP CD (and also self made
>autoinstall CD) was refusing to boot if the HD was allready partitioned with
>an "incompatible" fdisk tool. It was usually on test machine and I
had
>not problem doing a dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512
>and then reinstall all the machine from scratch, or if the installed
>OS were important then I used some imaging or backup tools. But the
reset of the
>partition was mandatory.
>You could try to use the very powerful BartPE live CD do restore your DLL.
Alain: Thank you for recommending BartPE!  I downloaded BartPE on this
side of the box (CentOS 5), but I couldn't unzip it in Linux. I moved
it over to our Windows ME box and unzipped it there. Since I cannot
start WinXP on this box, I can't run BartPE on this box at this time.
I was hoping BartPE would ask me to let it read the WinXP files from
the CD (on the WinME box), but no joy. This is the only box we have
that has WinXP on it and it is crippled. From what it said on the site
for BartPE, I was hoping it would permit me to make the CD on our
WinME box:
>4. Now PE Builder will ask to search for windows installation files.
If you don't have your windows XP setup/installation files on
your
>system you must insert the original Microsoft Windows XP
installation/setup CD at this point.

BartPE found that WinME was installed on that box and it died there.
If you have any ideas about how I can make the BartPE CD, on a non
WInME box, they will be much appreciated! TIA, Lanny

On 18 November 2007, Alain Spineux aspineux at gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
>BartPE found that WinME was installed on that box and it died there.
>If you have any ideas about how I can make the BartPE CD, on a non
>WInME box, they will be much appreciated! TIA, Lanny
Making the BartPE CD on a WinME box is apparently impossible. Here's
what it says on this URL:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/faq/#12
"Can Windows 9x/ME be used to build BartPE?
No, absolutely not!"

This box is dead in the water, with respect to booting WinXP, because
of the corrupted or missing user32.dll. We only have this one box with
WinXP, so unless there's another solution for me to rescue WinXP, I
will need to format and reinstall WinXP and CentOS5.  TIA, Lanny

On Nov 18, 2007 4:38 PM, MrKiwi <mrkiwi at gmail.com>
wrote:
> The problem is the mbr - i had the same problem trying to
> put a replacement sata drive into a machine - it had
> previously had centos on it, and i was trying to install xp.
>
> The solution for me was to use a dos boot disk and run
> fdisk /mbr
> however im not sure how that will affect your dual boot
> situation.
>
> Anyway ... the mbr issue will get you going in the right
> direction. Apparently xp cd gets hung if it cant make sense
> of the mbr, even if other disks exist with window-happy mbrs.
Mr. Kiwi: Thank you! I have a feeling this is the only path. I am
going to wait until the long Thanksgiving weekend and if another
possible solution doesn't appear, I think I will try what you
suggested, before I wipe the drive. If I fdisk /mbr and am then able
to restore the user32.dll file in WinXP, hopefully, after that, I
could reinstall GRUB and have my dual boot box working again. If not,
probably I will need to wipe the HD and install both OS's again. Lanny

On Sunday 18 Nov 2007 23:09:27 +0100, "Alain Spineux"
<aspineux at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>

Alain: I get the Digest version of the ML. Thank you, for the
additional information in your posts #33 and 34 yesterday! Much
appreicated!
>Yes and keep on hand a bart-pe boot disk, this time  :-)
Amen. After I get WinXP running again, I will make and test a BartPE
CD, ASAP!  I appreciate you telling me about BartPE! We don't use
Windows much and I'd never run into a problem with XP like this
before.  Lanny

On Sunday, 18 Nov 2007 14:46:23 -0800, "Akemi Yagi" <amyagi at
gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>If it is ever necessary to mount ntfs, follow this wiki:
>http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFSPartitions
>Read/write access to ntfs is now considered "safe" with the
current driver.
Akemi: Thank you! I will read that information on the Wiki in a few
minutes. Nice to know that it is now OK to write to NTFS, as well as
read NTFS. Lanny

On Sunday, 18 Nov 2007 14:46:23 -0800, "Akemi Yagi" <amyagi at
gmail.com> wrote:
<snip?
>If it is ever necessary to mount ntfs, follow this wiki:
>http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFSPartitions
>Read/write access to ntfs is now considered "safe" with the
current driver.
Akemi: I mounted it read only and I can see everything. I am going to
try to backup my Windows data to CDs now, in case the rescue does not
go well. Lanny

You can fix it all from CentOS.

Install CentOS plus kernel with NTFS support.

Insert cdrom. Use the ported "expand" app to expand the user32.dl_ out
of the i386 directory on the cd-rom (or an extracted copy of your
latest service pack), and then mount your NTFS partition read-write,
and copy the user32.dll into the windows\system32 directory, and
possibly the windows\system32\dllcache.

I would run all Windows accounts as restricted users from now on. I
have done that on my M$ home PC with fast-user switching and it
works well for me, my wife and children rarely need to "install"
anything, but if they do I tell them, save it to c:\temp and
I'll install it when I get home.

It may be worth while to try and image your Windows partition from
Linux if you have the space. Then you can restore your image and
your Windows if it gets corrupted again, which it won't if you
set all users as Restricted Users.

-Ross

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org 
> [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Lanny Marcus
> Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 10:12 AM
> To: CentOS Mailing List
> Subject: [CentOS] Dual boot box: WinXP & CentOS 5: Impossible 
> to restoreWinXP?
> 
> We rarely use M$ Windows, but I let my daughter surf pbskids.org while
> using Windows and a Trojan Horse modified or deleted the user32.dll
> file. I found the instructions on the Microsoft Support web site, and
> it would be very easy for me to expand a new copy of user32.dll if I
> could get the MS WinXP CD to work. It boots OK, I press a key so it
> will search hardware and it then has hard drive activity for a long,
> long time. My impression is that Microsoft does not want this to work
> on dual boot boxes.
> 
> I've tried this on dual boot boxes with Windows ME and Windows 98 SE
> and it works fine. Dell sent me two (2) new WinXP CDs (one in English
> and one in Spanish) but the problem apparently  is not that I have a
> defective WinXP CD from Dell.
> 
> Has anyone been able to restore WinXP on a dual boot box? TIA!
> -- 
> Lanny
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> Over 800 Magazine titles up to 85% off
> http://lowcostmagazines.com/
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> 
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On Tuesday, 20 November 2007, Nicolas Thierry-Mieg
<Nicolas.Thierry-Mieg at imag.fr> wrote:
<snip>
>I think it's been mentioned in the thread, but since you don't talk
>about this in your summary above: one thing I would recommend is create
>(at least) 2 partitions for MS: a small (5 to 10 G) for the system, and
>a larger one for data.
Nicholas: Our other boxes have four (4) partitions for Windows. I've
never installed Windows on this box, because it came from the factory
with WinXp in Spanish. I reduced the NTFS partition in size, to make
room for CentOS, but it's still running what came on it, out of the
Dell factory.  Last week, I got an English language WinXP from Dell,
so I'm ready to roll in English now and do it properly on this one
too!
>then use norton/symantec ghost to generate images of your system
Several of our boxes have had Removable EIDE drive units in them (made
by CRU) and I used those, before I began using Linux, to make images,
and that was a great thing to do. I got lazy about making the backups
and found it easier to backup over the network. I didn't use Norton
Ghost, I used something else, but as I write this, I can't recall the
name of the Utility I used to make the images. As I recall, at that
time (a few years ago), Norton was more difficult to use and I'd read
something about some unreliable results from Ghost.
>you can probably do this with linux tools as well if you don't want
to buy ghost.

Yes. I will do everything possible with Linux tools in the future.
Thank you! Lanny

On Tuesday, 20 November 2007, "Bart Schaefer" <barton.schaefer at
gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>I'd second this, but I'd say it's much better to go in the
direction
>of 10G than 5.  I installed WinXP  on a Mac Mini (BootCamp) with 5GB
>on the internal drive and everything else on a firewire external
>drive, and now after about a year of automatic updates that 5GB is so
>nearly consumed that I'm having to shuffle things around by hand to
>keep it working.  It's just too damn difficult to prevent Windows
>software from dumping crap on the C: drive (and then referencing its
>location in the registry so it becomes nearly impossible to relocate
>it).
Bart: I'm contemplating using 10 of the 40 GB for WinXP and the rest
for CentOS 5. I hope to redo this box on Friday. What you mentioned is
one of my many pet peeves about Windows. Frequently, I will install
some Windows ap and the piggish programmers who wrote the stuff were
not professional enough to allow me to select where I want it
installed (our other boxes have a D partition for Programs, which is
where I'd want it installed) and they just go ahead and install into
C, as if they own the box.  Lanny