John Hendrickx wrote:
[snip]
> In any case, the output looks similar to yours. /dev/hda1 is
> recognized as a FAT32 boot device. I should be able to boot Windows,
> but I can't.
>
> The problem could be related to the fact that my BIOS doesn't
> recognize the geometry of this disk because it's larger than 8G. I've
> installed Disk Manager software from the manufacturer Seagate and I
> suspect that something is screwed up there. I get a prompt during
> boot to press the spacebar to boot from a floppy but if I try that
> now the boot hangs after a few seconds. That's what happens with my
> Win95 rescue disk too, autoexec.bat and config.sys disabled (the DM
> software is installed on this floppy). I can boot with my Win95
> installation floppy in a normal manner, before I get the spacebar
> prompt. If I do that, fdisk recognizes only 8M, no partitions. The
> Seagate DM diskette also boots but doesn't recognize partitions.
> Reinstalling the Seagate DM software doesn't help, neither does
> rewriting the MBR from the Seagate DM diskette.
>
> I could try repartioning with the Seagate DM diskette. Maybe I could
> get it to recognize the partitions but I suspect I'll lose everything
> if I do that. There's not enough space on my slave IDE disk to hold
> all the Win95 files, otherwise I could just reformat the primary disk
> and be done with it. Looks bleak. Any suggestions>
[snip]
> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/hda1 * 1 467 3751146 b Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda2 468 1867 11245500 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/hda5 468 469 16033+ 83 Linux
> /dev/hda6 935 1401 3751146 b Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda7 1402 1867 3743113+ b Win95 FAT32
> /dev/hda8 470 752 2273166 83 Linux
> /dev/hda9 753 784 257008+ 82 Linux swap
> /dev/hda10 785 935 1212876 83 Linux
John....the main thing I wanted to check in your partition
table was that hda1 was set as bootable, which it is.
Your assumption that DM has something to do with the problem
is probably correct. You see both the multi OS boot manager
(either lilo or grub) that Linux installs and DM want (and
need) the mbr to do their respective jobs.
I've no personal experience with DM and/or other software like
it, so I'm at a loss to make any suggestions on how to
approach this problem while still using DM.
By the way, just how are you booting into linux? It sounds as
if DM has control of the mbr yet you seem to have access to
Linux. Are you using the boot disk you made during the linux
installation to boot or is DM accessing the Linux boot
partition somehow?
Linux will run and recognize your whole drive without the DM
software, but obviously Windows won't. So an approach to this
would be to install all windows partitions below the 8 gig
point on your drive and let Windows think that 8 gig is all
you have. You'd need to only use partitions hda1, hda2 and
hda3 for windows and save hda4 for linux to use as an
exclusivly Linux extended partition.
Now I'm not saying there is nothing you can do with the
current setup, just that I can't help with that. There may be
something that can be done and if there is maybe someone else
will speak up.
Alan
