cant boot after Mandrake install

[bookouri]

Ive had this problem with Mandrake 8.1 and now I tried the 8.2 release and the same thing happens. I have two drives. My hd0 has my win2k system, hd1 is blank.. When I install I end up with a system that will not boot. Mandrake recognizes the windows drive and modifies the mbr but instead of lilo when I boot up I get a repeating bunch of o's and 1's that goes on until I reboot to a 98 boot disk and do a fdisk /mbr to fix it. I then tried setting my cmos to only boot from the linux drive but all i get is an invalid boot media message. How can I install Mandrake so I can boot it? I dont mind going into cmos and changing my boot device every time, if I could get that to work Id be happy. A working dual boot would be ok. But the only way I can boot linux seems to be to boot from the install cd, and then linux wants to reinstall itself.

any help would be appreciated....

 

[MattWray]

If you don't mind booting from floppy, you should be able to tell Mandrake to boot only from floppy during install. I am quite the newbie, so I may be wrong... Matt Wray
CCNA, MCP
mwray77518@yahoo.com

 

[wmg]

Eww - I remember that happening a while back but I can't remember what fixed it - it may have also been with Redhat and not Mandrake but can't be certain.

Gee - not much help eh?! Ummm - it may have been Mandrake actually and when I was trying the new GRUB boot loader. It may have been going back to LILO that fixed the problem - give that a go instead.

I'm about to re-install with 8.2 as well so I'll let you know if I have the same problem (I managed to get 8.1 on satisfactorily).

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

Sounds like a geometry error - you have to have lilo in the same 'mode' as the drive within the bios - e.g. chs /lba .

Anyway, to install on the second drive you would edit your /etc/lilo.conf and change the line that says

boot=/dev/hda

to

boot=/dev/hdb

Then run the actual install based on that revised config (as root) :

# /sbin/lilo -v

That should install lilo in the MBR of the second drive (primary slave). If its connected to the secondary controller it would be :

/dev/hdc secondary - master
/dev/hdd secondary - slave


Hope this helps

 

[bookouri]

e.g. chs /lba

I suspect the problem is with the lba stuff. I remember during the install of lilo having a setup screen with a checkbox related to lba and a message stating that you shouldnt need it so I didnt check it. I may reinstall and check the box and see if that works. meantime Im booting from floppy when I want linux and from hd0 when i want windows.. now if i could just get X to work...

thanks

 

[Squadcar7]

Sounds to me like you blew out the NT Boot Loader. That's the problem. The LBA may be the technical term for it, but you only want Linux to write one line to the master boot record on NT and 2k (probably same with XP), or else the NT Boot Loader, which sits on the MBR, gets corrupted. The one line that you want Linux to write references to LILO or Grub in a different area of your hard drive. You'll probably need to "over - the - top" install 2K, and then reinstall Linux that way.