I'm just wondering if there's somebody around who knows about the nitty-gritty details of how computers boot and could help me.

I have a dual boot between Windows XP Pro and lubuntu 15.04. The sizes of partitions weren't very fairly divided so I decided to shrink the XP and give lubuntu some more breathing room. I tried to use GParted from a live lubuntu CD but it couldn't read the partition contents (complained about bad sectors, though I'm nearly positive there's no problems with the hard drive, and recommended using chkdsk twice and then ntfsresize). So I ended up following this guide to use ntfsresize and fdisk to shrink the partition.

Unfortunately now the windows side won't boot.
I did expect this, but I also thought I could fix it. >_<

I've tried:
-running chkdsk (multiple times), fixboot, and fixmbr from a windows xp cd
-running the application. (paste bin link [url=http://paste.ubuntu.com/14043198/]here)
-running testdisk and trying to fix the windows boot sector.

What the current state is:
-grub is installed and has three boot options; ubuntu, advanced ubuntu, and windows xp
-lubuntu starts fine (I'm typing from it right now)
-selecting xp in grub just results in a blinking cursor.
-I can mount the Windows XP partition in lubuntu and access all the files.
-I don't have anything important that isn't backed up

What I want to happen:
-I become the emperor of the universe.

Thanks for your help!

If i recall right, XP and prior is still based on a 512 byte boot sector that loads the real loader and continues from there. Using a recovery CD you can boot up, make sure the boot configuration is correct, and then the boot sector and information will get updated thereby fixing the partition.

Personally i've always found it confusing or documentation hard to find.

I think this is sorta what you need: http://best-windows.vlaurie.com/boot-ini.html

I've been resizing Windows 7 system partitions 4 times with 100% success and there is a very easy to follow formula for doing so:
For Microsoft products use Microsoft's software - I used the build in windows partition tool accessed from: Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management.
It was quite easy and went fast and without fault. And actually there is a logic behind that - if this software is build-in the system and if there is only one case where it must work it should be on that system :)
Its the same with the build-in defragmentation tool - it might not be the best out there, but for a windows partition at least it will never fail and screw your windows :)

Try reinstalling GRUB from a live CD.

Can't help you with your issue but I recommend checking this site:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm

They've got extensive knowledge base about partition management. Their support & users are also very helpful - post your problem on the board - they could give you a hint even you don't use their products. I personally have been using BareBM for multiboot/imaging/partition management and it never failed me.

You could try running update-grub. (It should already be installed on your machine, but you will need root (i.e. sudo) to run it.)

(Also, even if you did have important stuff that isn't backed up, it isn't too late to make that back up, since you can still access the files.)

Oh ya. That was another thing I did; ran "bootcfg /rebuild". Didn't seem to do anything. I don't believe that is in windows XP. Though I think there is a very basic one in the recovery console. Either way, too late for me :( Already tried that three times with the boot-repair program, including purging it once. :/ Taking a look there right now, looks like they offer a free trial version too. But grub knows that windows is there already doesn't it? If it shows up in the list... Tried it anyway, couldn't hurt!

Hm...whatever you do I would recommend reading some kb articles about XP boot failure or posting on TU's forum first. Installing additional boot manager on top of unworking configuration could make things worse.

Yes, I thought at first that it was a program but on closer inspection it's not. Their site is not entirely clear I must say.
kb articles?

Knowledge Base articles.

Sounds like the NTFS <span class="bold">partition</span> boot sector might be borked. Had something similar happen to me before, but months after I had moved my XP partition to a different disk which I then successfully booted into XP from multiple times. Stop working the one day: "A disk read error occurred." IIRC, in my case the Number Of Heads was FE instead of FF. Fixed it and it started booting again.
Given you see no message your issue is likely a bit different.

If you're certain that your drive has no bad sector, you can easily flush the bad clusters table ($BadClus) with <span class="bold">DFSee</span>.  It's a powerful linux application that can fix problems with boot sectors, partition tables and file systems.  The interface is not user friendly, but you can easily find tutorials on the Internet.  <span class="bold">Spinrite</span> is another handy tool for recovering bad drives.

If GRUB loads itself and lubuntu just fine, it's probably not a problem of it being installed wrong. The "Windows XP" menu entry could be wrongly configured, or the Windows XP partition boot sector could be hosed. Or it could be more serious than that.

I would be very concerned about those complaints of bad sectors. While it could be that the hard drive or the system bus was in a a very rare temporary state of confusion, it's not something that usually happens for no reason. Even when it does, it probably means that the drive didn't properly finish something it was doing. Leaving a partition resize halfway done could be very bad news for everything on it.

I would start by trying to copy everything that matters off that drive to a safe place as a first step.

EDIT: I don't really know Windows, but having given the matter some thought it would not be surprising at all if the partition boot sector would have to be rewritten after a resize, and I don't know if your tool does that. You could probably do that from Windows somehow, were first able to boot it somehow. Though it might insist on overwriting GRUB on the MBR, and you would then have to reinstall it afterwards to boot lubuntu again.

I'm not certain that there are no bad sectors, but rather that the hard dive isn't in serious trouble. I'll explain:

My computer troubles first started when a family member tried to start the computer to print something. The computer took for ever to start. Later when I started the computer I found the same problem. I at first thought they had introduced a virus from their USB stick. But a ton of scans later I had found nothing. I managed to pin point the problem down to one dll that was malfunctioning. Boot from lubuntu I tried to replace it, and got read write errors… uh oh.
So I had HD failure. Since I had a spare hard drive I decided to try and copy the old install to the new drive, however the old drive was smaller. This caused a heck of a lot of problems. After the copy I couldn't get the windows to boot (deja-vu…). So I ended up doing a complete re-install. However, the windows XP just used the already created NTFS partition, which due to the size of my previous windows install was 100gb out of 110. That's how I got such unbalanced partition sizes. After the install I could never get GParted to resize the windows partition. So then when I really really wanted a larger Linux I tried a different way… and find myself where I am now.

So I think you can see why I don't think there are problems with the hard drive, I just had this problem and its entirely different. It seems more likely that there is somehow a remnant of corruption from the copy of the bad drive.


…or I'm entirely crazy. That's possible too.
Isn't that what fixboot and fixmbr do?

On your journey to becoming the emperor of the universe have you reinstalled the Microsoft loader to the MBR, overwriting GRUB in the process? As in no GRUB anything when you go to boot. If so, was there any different result?