Explorer crashes on linux partitions

[silent tone]

I installed mandrake 9 yesterday to dual boot with my win2k box. On my boot drive I had 2 ntfs partitions originally. In windows, I reformatted the extended partion to fat32 and ran the linux install. In there, I had to(maybe not, but I'm a linux noob) delete the fat32 partition and let it automatically creeate 3 partitions. Finished install and Mandrake and LILO works fine. However in windows whenever I open 'my computer', 'disk management' or anything that has a link to the old fat32 drive, explorer hangs or crashes. Unfortunately there are no events logged in teh event viewer. Bootup and shutdown, seem to wait around a while more than they did before as well. Any ideas to fix explorer?

 

[cleverhandle]

NT boxes don't like it when Linux messes around inside their extended partitions. You can change their system types without any trouble, but actually deleting or adding logicals inside an extension created by NT angers the gods. I did this once, and XP wouldn't even boot up. I found some way (auto-repair, maybe?) to get back in and save my data, but the system couldn't handle stress tests anymore, and I ended up reinstalling. Good luck...

 

[silent tone]

Thanks cleverhandle. Does anybody have a solution or know a free partition tool that I could try?

 

[obenton]

I put Mandrake 8.2 on a logical drive in an extended partition. It shows up in w2k disk management and explorer as an unformatted partition, and attempts to open it in Explorer are simply greeted with a message asking if I want to format it.

 

[Nothinman]

I agree with obenton, if win2k is crashing from that something else is wrong.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: obenton
I put Mandrake 8.2 on a logical drive in an extended partition. It shows up in w2k disk management and explorer as an unformatted partition, and attempts to open it in Explorer are simply greeted with a message asking if I want to format it.

Did you create the partitions using Linux tools or in Windows? Also, was 2k within the extension or outside it?

Just trying to sort things out... I never did find any good supporting info on why my disaster occured, but it was pretty clear that deleting XP's logical partition was at the heart of it. I've repartitioned and dual-booted enough times over the years to rule out simple errors. So some aspect of the repartitioning I did (and it sounds like istallion did as well) ticked off XP pretty severely.

 

[silent tone]

2K was in the primary partition. The partition was originally created by 2K, but the mandrake installer killed it and created its own. I have since obtained a 3rd party partition manager. I deleted the extended partion, created a second primary partition and left it unformatted. Reinstalled Mandrake but it thought the new partition was fat32 so I let the installer delete it and create its 3 partitions. Windows seems to work fine now, Explorer doesn't show those 3 partitions, 'disk management' shows 3 'healthy' partitions. The only minor problems now are that bootup takes about 2mins longer sitting on a black screen.

 

[obenton]

I created the partition in w2k. left it informatted, and told Mandrake install to use only it for itself. No problem. Also told Mandrake to put LILO on a floppy in order to not disturb the w2k boot, so that if I remove Mandrake I won't have the bother of repairing the w2k boot.