Re: Repairing NTFS partitions in Linux

Clive wrote:

One of the many reasons that I finally switched to Linux was that my
Windows XP installation had failed (yet again) this seemed to happen when
I had left my WinXP in hibernation and next time I came to boot up, it
hung. Trying to reinstall/repair from my Windows Installation disk made no
difference.

However loading up Suse 10 on a seperate hard disk allowed me to access
files on the 'crashed' NTFS drive and so all was fine.

When I try to mount the NTFS drive for RW instead of Read Only, mount
fails complaining that the NTFS disk is in 'hibernation' which is great as
at least Linux understands the status of the drive compaired to the
Windows repair console which was never able to determine that the
installation was in a hibernated state.

So my question is, how can I correct this ? How can I mount the NTFS drive
as R/W ? Even better how could I repair the Windows drive so it will boot
up into XP instead of hanging when it tries to recover from a corrupted
hibernation state ?

//Clive.

The problem your Linux has is that because it knows that your system is
sleeping or hybernating, it means that it must treat the system as active.
It could wake up at any time (wake on comms, or wake on timer, or just a
button press) and if Linux is accessing at the same time as the waking
system, then they could be trouble. Remember that NTFS is a software faked
shared filesystem (not a network file system in the truer sense), your
Linux would have no way of knowing what else was going on at the same time
as it is accessing it.

So your first trick has to be to get your XP out of hybernation. I know that
on some laptops that all I have to do is hold the power button for a full
minute, then next time it comes up it starts from scratch and even if you
can't get your main system up you can at least get to the safe boot mode or
maybe even debug mode. I have had a few, various laptop models, that got
themselves into a knott with the hybernation. Actually my Sony Via
sometimes had that trouble until I put Suse on it, now it sleeps and wakes
without problems for what must be close to two years now.

Anyway, thats it really, you need to find the way to force a start from
scratch and all the ones I know off center around the power and sleep
buttons. Here are those that I know of,

From plugging in the power, hold the power button pressed for a full minute
(give it 10 seconds or so over to make sure). Release then press once,
should start from scratch abandoning the saved state.

Press the sleep button and hold it pressed before you press the power
button as normal.


.