1 Topic by hwing91

  • hwing91
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Topic: Gparted-live- "Warning: Address line a20 already enabled"

My friend's windows became corrupted and he can't boot from it nor does he have any spare hard drives. He has a laptop where he can burn cds and other things from but right now his main cannot boot up.

So I told him to create a partition to his main's hard drive and then install windows on the partition because he wants to save all his data.

So he tried booting from it and got that error... "Warning: ADdress line a20 already enabled"

Im curious to know what causes this?

PS: I'm not sure if this is the problem but I have to go to classes soon and I just wanted to have this post up and see replies in 8 hours...but im not sure if he burned the image or just copied it to the cd before he burned it...im telling him to burn an image from nero to the CD as I did when I partitioned mine for vista..

If this is the problem just ignore this or tell me, if its not, can you guys help me find a solution or what is causing this? Thanks in advance.

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: Gparted-live- "Warning: Address line a20 already enabled"

This is strange. It seems to come from the 286/386 computing era! Please, check the cd and the ISO file.

Furthermore, it isn't simple to install mswindows 2 times on the same hard drive. It isn't a good plactice to backup data on the same hard drive. Just imagine that it is possible to loose the master boot sector, the partition table or the partition itself during partitioning operations. Are you sure that the existing partition is good? It would be better to boot from a live cd or dvd like Knoppix, access the corrupted partition and copy data to another medium (like external drive). Then, you could reinstall the operating system and restore data from the backup.

(topic moved to the live media section)

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by hwing91

  • hwing91
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Re: Gparted-live- "Warning: Address line a20 already enabled"

He has an external but somehow he broke it...right now there aren't any partitions on the drive so he has only his main corrupt windows one.
So we're trying to use G-parted to create a partition and install windows, if XP doesn't work, vista then, I have both copies and I think this might be our only chance unless we wana wait for a little or buy another external thats big enough.

I'll tell him to redownload and reburn.

4 Reply by class413

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Re: Gparted-live- "Warning: Address line a20 already enabled"

GParted wouldn't touch a patition that is broken or with a filesystem it can't understand. That's why I advice to check if the filesystem is good or damaged. It is much easier to repair a broken boot loader than a damaged filesystem (in fact, the late could be impossible in many cases).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***