RE: windows 2000 could not start because the following file is mi ssing or corrupt: <windows 2000 root>/system32/ntoskrnl.exe

[Graeme Vetterlein]

> Please note that the following explanations are just _guesses_...

Thanks for the reply (even if it's just a guess :-) I suspect I need you to 
give me a little background (FYI I have played around with FDISK partitions
back in the days of MSDOS 3.0 ... but not a lot since :-)

(you may want to tell me to RTFM ... but please add a URL ..and your
footnotes :-)

        1: There is a 'table' held with the MBR at the start of the DISK
           this has (by convention) space for 4 entries (the primaries) 
           ... then lots of stuff I don't understand about extended/logical.

        2: The major/minor numbers for (in this case SCSI) disks is:

                /dev/sda (whole disk)   8,0
                /dev/sda1                       8,1
                /dev/sda2                       8,2
                ...
                /dev/sda15                      8,15

        3: The disk itself is divided into partitions 
        4: Within a partition you can add a single filesystem (or use it raw
e.g. as swap_
                (BTW you might be interested to know SVR4.2 AKA UnixWare
allowed these FDISK
                 partitions to be further subdivided into partitions ...
e.g.. edvtoc :-)                

What I need to understand is the TERMINOLOGY used by various folks (grub,
fdisk, M$ etc):

Entries in 'fdisk table'

        Q: Does each 'entry' have a 'slot' attribute such that entry No 3
can be slot No 2?
           Or does the entry No, imply 'slot No'? (I seem to recall it does)

        Q: If so, do we start at zero or one. Is it 0,1,2,3 or 1,2,3,4 ?

        Q: How are we referring to partitions on disk? Is the first (low
cylinder Nos) called 0
           next 1 etc. Alternatively do we call partition 0 the partition
that is described by slot 0?

        Q: What does say /dev/sda1 refer to?
                Fdisk entry No 1 (or number zero?)
                Slot No 1 (0?)
                Physical partition No 1 (low cylinder No)

        Q: What does grub reference (hd0, 2) refer to?
                /dev/sd2 ?
                Fdisk entry No 2 
                Slot No 2
                Physical partition No 2 (next to low cylinder No)
                
        Q: What does M$ use. Looks like partition(1) means '1st non empty
slot in fdisk table' (number from 1)
        (or 2nd entry, numbered from zero, with the dummy entry you
suggest:-)

        Q: What does 'fix partition table' mean? why does it matter that
slot order lines up with
           physical partition order?
                

> What would be interesting are the mbr of the second disk (if it is
> identical to the MBR of the first disk with the initial 
> partitioning of
> Windows).

I have the 'cloned' disk prior to starting RedHat install (it's in a
different box right now) if
you tell me what kinds of dumps etc would be useful I can do that ... I'll
have to do it from a CD 
boot but that should be no problem.


--

Graeme


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