[ale] error booting XP after dual boot install of Ubuntu 7.10

[Brian Pitts]

Robert Reese wrote:
  > To answer the question above, what it sounds like was you had a bad 
repartition.  Windows needs a very strong defrag before doing any kind 
of repartitioning, especially if the disk has _ever_ had files that 
would have been in the repartitioned space.  And if there were XP system 
files that got toasted during the partitioning (that is, if they were in 
the section of the harddrive that was repartitioned) then Windows likely 
would have attempted to fix the installation, which most likely included 
'disk-fixing' and MBR-writing.  Thus, GRUB would have been destroyed. 
And trust me, that's *so* easy to do with a Windows machine!

If you can make this happen, then PLEASE report it to ntfsprogs [0]. 
According to the ntfsresize manpage, "Defragmentation is NOT required 
prior to resizing because the program can relocate any data if needed, 
without risking data integrity." In my experience, ntfsresize is a very 
conservative program which is safe to use without doing anything to 
Windows beforehand.

I've never heard of Windows spontaneously writing to the MBR (windows 
installation is of course a different matter), but I doubt I've seen it all.

[0] http://linux-ntfs.org

-Brian