how to retrieve the partition information through the output of root (hd0, xx) ?

[tjzhang]

Hello,
  I have a corrputed information of the partition table. The grub was 
installed through SuSE
Now the only way for me to have a glimpse is this:


(1) boot into the grub mini bash interface
(2) type root (hd0,0)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7 
( My orginally partition ntfs for windows xp)
(3) type root (hd0,1)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x5
(my original linux extended partition)
(4) type root (hd0,2)
Error 18: Selected cyclinder exceeds maximum supported by bios
( Actually, when I made the original partition table, I did not have 
a /dev/hda3, it is a window95 (LBA) partition (0xC)and was part of 
the extended partition /dev/hda2.
 I guess the error code is probably mis-leading; when it executes, 
the disk makes a lot of noise; when I boot linux ot run fdisk cfdisk 
sfdisk etc, this noise company the kernel error messages dma_intr 
error DriveReady SeekComplete Error, UncorrectableError 
 )  
 (5) I have 2 other windows95 (LBA ) partitions (hd0,7) and (hd0,8) 
belonged to the extended partition (hd0,1). Type the similar command 
and generate the Same error. 

(6) I can go on to get infor of my other partitions :
(hd0,4), (hd0,5), (hd0,6), (hd0,9), (hd0,10), (hd0,11), (hd0,12) and 
they give out the correct original partition type such as ext2, swap, 
reiserfs. All of them not recognizable by windows.  For all my 
original windows partitions, except the (hd0,0), all others make 
noise and not readable.
 
 I don't know wherher it is because in my later stage installation of 
windows xp, it uses dynamic disk manager and playes some trick with 
my windows parts.
Now, I can not boot or even install windows. 
However, I can still boot into my linux installation through the grun 
interface.  
 After the system boot into linux, I can not get a complete info of 
the partition table as above any more, even in the grub interface.


So, I'd hope someone can point out how and where during the initial 
boot up of grub, I get the above information. It seems that by the 
above way, I can still get the sector locations of the various 
partitions.
 I'd like to try whether as some hints  pointed out by Richard Russon 
( LDM) that it is because grub does not recognize windows xp dynamic 
disk manager's operation.  However, as the above method seems to be 
the only way for me to get the partition information, I wish to be 
able to save it somewhere become my other installation error.
 gpart, fdisk die when I use them after booting into the system. I 
can only use sfdisk to get a incomplete partition.

I had Award Medallion BIOS v6.0
ASUS CUSL2 ACPI BIOS Revision 1001.A
 pIII

 I can not exclude the hardware error as I did find a bad memory. 
However, the next morning I found this more terrible error because of 
my previous midnight bad operation.
   
   
Thank you sincerely,

Tianjiao