Fatal error bad primary partition 0

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Hi,

Due to problems during the debian install, windows XP is not visible to grub….

I bought a refurbished compaq xn6110 with windows XP. I had 2 failed attempts at installing debian 6.0.3 from USB stick (using the netinst iso) and the 3rd was successful. The first attempt successfully repartitioned the disk and formatted the new partitions, but failed installing the base system due to a corrupt file (presumably a glitch in the download or writing to the USB stick).

I re-did the download and write of the iso and tried again. I only told it to format swap because the previous formatting had been successful. This time it «hung» during the disk formatting and after an hour I powered off (not a great idea I know, but the previous formatting had taken less than 20 mins (it’s only a 40GB disk). When I powered back up without the USB stick (to check Windows was intact), it refused to boot (a black screen saying something like «unable to load OS»).

On the 3rd attempt debian installed successfully and is very lovely. Windows XP was listed on one of the final screens as an existing OS which would be available as dual-boot. But on startup grub does not list windows as a boot option.

In case it is useful, fdisk -l returns

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xef2aef2a

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        2432    19531250    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2   *        2432        3040     4882432   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            3040        4864    14654465    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            3040        3283     1951744   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            3283        4864    12701696   83  Linux

I tried using cfdisk to toggle the boot flag for /dev/sda1 (seemed like an obvious thing to try). It gave me a black screen with the message:

FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition begins after end-of-disk

Any suggestions for what to try next? Can I fiddle with anything like grub settings to see if it will include windows? Or would it be easier just to re-install windows into the NTFS partition?

Thanks,
Alistair

ponyboy wrote:I tried using cfdisk to toggle the boot flag for /dev/sda1 (seemed like an obvious thing to try). It gave me a black screen with the message:

Code: Select all
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition begins after end-of-disk

This does not look promising…
It would seem your MBR might contain incorrect information about that partition.

Installing testdisk, and using it to identify and correct that data, could help.

AdrianTM wrote:There’s no hacker in my grandma…

dilberts_left_nut wrote:Installing testdisk, and using it to identify and correct that data, could help.

I partly agree with the above post of dilberts_left_nut.
But be careful when you use testdisk. If you try to do wrong thing, you can destroy all the partitions.

ponyboy wrote:I tried using cfdisk to toggle the boot flag for /dev/sda1 (seemed like an obvious thing to try). It gave me a black screen with the message:

Code: Select all

FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition begins after end-of-disk

cfdisk gives often similar error message for even correct partition table.
The result of «fdisk -l» does not show strange thing about /dev/sda1 (NTFS), which seems to be windows XP partition.
You can check if windows XP is able to be detected by GRUB2 (os-prober) by executing the following:

If the above command gives information on Windows XP on /dev/sda1, maybe your grub2 configuration is wrong.

=====

jheaton5 wrote:Try this in a termianal as root:

«update-grub» instead of «update_grub»

do a clean install of debian.
after that if XP is not visible on grub try this:

1)  # sudo apt-get install os-prober

2)  # sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

3) add the following line after # GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
 # GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

4)  # sudo update-grub2

if you want you can edit your grub boot timeout 2 it worked for me dozens of times
you can find that in here 2: http://wiki.debian.org/Grub
let us know how it went.

kudos

ponyboy wrote:Thanks all — now working!

os-prober said that windows existed and update-grub did what is says on the tin. I now have a dual-boot system as planned.

Cheers!

glad to ear that mate!
please do add [SOLVED] tag to the topic title
kudos

Congratulations!

I just mention:

ZACHARiAS wrote:3) add the following line after # GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
# GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

If you worry about disabling with /etc/default/grub, you should remove the first «#», thus:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=»false»
I am not sure whether double quotation is necessary or not.

Please refer to
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275

kiyop wrote:Congratulations!

I just mention:

ZACHARiAS wrote:3) add the following line after # GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT
# GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

If you worry about disabling with /etc/default/grub, you should remove the first «#», thus:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=»false»
I am not sure whether double quotation is necessary or not.

Please refer to
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1195275

yea mate. afaik, everyone know that when seeing i.e. «#» or «$» should only copy+paste or type everuthing exept for those symbols :p
kudos

Most persons may know that «#» before a command means that the command should be executed with root privilege, after prompt «#».
Most persons may know that «#» in text files means that the words after it are comments and are not executed nor dealt with.

To ponyboy;
What did you do to solve your problem?
Did you reinstall debian?

scippio

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Registered: 2007-01-02

Posts: 60

BIG problem with disk

FUBAR

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From: Belgium

Registered: 2004-12-08

Posts: 1,029

Website

Re: BIG problem with disk

fsck /dev/hdd1
mount /dev/hdd1 /mnt

scippio

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Registered: 2007-01-02

Posts: 60

Re: BIG problem with disk

chaosgeisterchen

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From: Kefermarkt, Upper Austria

Registered: 2006-11-20

Posts: 550

Re: BIG problem with disk

scippio

Member

Registered: 2007-01-02

Posts: 60

Re: BIG problem with disk

# sudo fdisk /dev/hdd1

Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.


The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 38912.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hdd1: 320.0 GB, 320070303232 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38912 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

Command (m for help):

Pajaro

Member

Registered: 2004-04-21

Posts: 884

Re: BIG problem with disk

T-Dawg

Forum Fellow

From: Charlotte, NC

Registered: 2005-01-29

Posts: 2,736

Re: BIG problem with disk

are you sure you have the right disk? Traditionally hdd is your first secondary  IDE channel, or a cdrom. Do an ls on /dev to see all available drives.

scippio

Member

Registered: 2007-01-02

Posts: 60

Re: BIG problem with disk

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: BIG problem with disk

scippio

Member

Registered: 2007-01-02

Posts: 60

Re: BIG problem with disk