NTFS C:\ partition became corrupt when grub was installed onto /dev/sda1

[Nicholas Furgiuele]

When installing GRUB to my Windows partition, the partition became corrupt.

On my setup I have 3 hard drives, I have 2 x PATA (120GB and 160GB) and 1 SATA
(120GB).
They list in the following order:
#1 - 160GB PATA
#2 - 120GB PATA
#3 - 120GB SATA <- boot drive, sda

The Partition Layout on the SATA drive is as follows:
[1 - NTFS 100GB Windows XP C:\ *active]
[2 - ext3 94MB /boot]
[EXTENDED]
    [5 - ext3 6.52GB /]
    [7 - swap 1012MB]
    [6 - ext3 /home 4.19GB]
[/EXTENDED]

I installed GRUB to my C:\ partition (sda1) and somehow GRUB corrupted my C:\
partition rather then installing to the boot sector of this partition. All files
in this partition became unreadable by both Windows and Linux.

After my Ubuntu installation I got the following error when the system booted:
"Operating System Missing"

I then took the following actions to resolve:

1) I decided to re-install Ubuntu, during the install process I set sda2 as the
boot partition, and installed GRUB to this partition (sda2).

When the system installed and re-booted, I was greeted with the GRUB menu,
Ubuntu booted with no problems (after I edited it's boot entry due to Bug
#12031). Unfortunatley when I booted the WIndows XP partition I would get a blank
GRUB prompt, as if I had booted into another blank copy of GRUB which has no
menu.lst file.

2) I decided to boot Ubuntu and did the following:
    a) Ran command "fdisk -l" which gave the following output:

root@ubuntu:/home/nic # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

  Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 13054 104856223+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 13055 13066 96390 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 13067 14593 12265627+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 13067 13917 6835626 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 14047 14593 4393746 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 13918 14046 1036161 83 Linux

    b) Tried to mount the partition in Linux (after installing NTFS drivers,
creating fstab entries and testing on other NTFS partitions)

root@ubuntu:/home/nic # mount /mnt/TheMatrix/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
      or too many mounted file systems

    ^ All my other NTFS drives mounted with no problems using similar fdisk entries

3) I rebooted, and ran Windows XP recovery console. The recovery console was
unable to find any Windows XP installation on any hard disc. Hence I was left
with no choice but to reboot.

4) I used my Bart PE disc (Windows Pre Install Environment) which booted to it's
desktop, and listed my Windows XP partition as "E:\ New Disk". When I brought up
the properties of this volume it listed the partition as a 100GB "RAW" type
partition.

5) A Google search put me onto a tool called "Test Disk 5.5", I downloaded the
Windows NT version and ran using the command prompt of the "Windows XP Pre Inst
Env" disc.

* At first Test Disk was unable to read any files off the sda1 partition.

* I was able to use this tool to recover the partition by:
    a) used it to re-write the partition table
    b) changed the Windows XP partition from a PRIMARY to a LOGICAL
    c) changed the partition from LOGICAL back to a PRIMARY again.

The Test Disk program was able to read the files from my sda1 partition.

6) Rebooted into Bart PE again, it listed my Windows XP drive as a 100GB NTFS
partition, and it was also able to read the files on the partition.
I used the Windows XP "diskpart" tool to set the WIndows XP partition to become
the boot partition again.

7) I ran the Windows XP setup CD again and launched recovery console, it
detected my XP install, so I ran the "FIXBOOT" and the "FIXMBR" commands.

8) Restarted the system and Windows XP booted without any problems.

A note: I used the Windows Pre Inst Environment to do a lot of things here, but
the "Test Disk" program is also available in DOS and Linux flavours as well. I'm
sure this could have also been achieved through a combination of Linux and
Windows XP setup disc.

I realise that there probably wasnt much need to outline the steps I took to
solve the problem, but at the least it might be usefull for anybody else who has
encountered a similar problem, judging from a search there seem to be a lot of
people who have experienced this problem or similar problems.

I put the package down ad the grub-installer, but I'm not 100% sure if it was
GRUB's fault or not. Sorry if it is filed in the wrong place.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=12&t=273047: http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=12&t=273047

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I think this is a duplicate of bug #8322

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks for your report.

I tend to agree with Matt here: the fact that playing with the partition type
helped to resurrect it suggests that Windows was having trouble reading the
partition table, which would be a consequence of #1566. Nicholas, if you can,
please test with the beta CD at
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hoary/array-2/ and let us know if that has
the same problem. If it still breaks Windows, feel free to reopen this bug.

This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 8322.