Hello, thanks everybody for your suggestions :) The only one I have followed so far is Civileme's suggestion to try running through the installer again in "Expert Update" mode and to ask it to put the bootloader on hdc5 rather than hdca. I first tried putting it onto hdc, as I was a little confused and wasn't sure whether you *really* meant hdc or hdc5, but thought that perhaps hdc as this is sort of more "right at the start" of the disk and where you would expect the bIOS to look etc. I never have been able to get the hang of how all this works though! So after doing this I rebooted and set the bIOS to boot from IDE-1, which should be the hdc drive (6.4 GB), and this time I got a "boot failure" message (from the BIOS I think?) but no "01 01 01 01" So then I tried putting in my Mandrake Boot floppy, set BIOS to boot from floppy, and got: "Searching for boot record from floppy..ok" Lilo 21.7 Press <return> (...) to boot your Linux-Mandrake system from /dev/hdc5 .....etc" So I hit return but then got "Loading Linux", a single dot which could either be a period or the start of one of those "....." timers, and then "Error 0x10" So then I tried running the installer again and this time chose "hdc5" for where to put the boot-loader. I don't know whether the fact that it may have already written something to whatever it thinks "hdc" is would have already stuffed up this region of the disk though? anyway, I got *exactly* the same behaviour just described above. Perhaps I should do a complete reinstall now, to clear up whatever it may have done to hdc, and this time ask it to use hdc5? So....next I got out FDISK to have a look at the partitions. Dos FDISK refused to believe the second drive (ie the 6.4 GB one) was even there, but Linux FDISK gave me some extensive information, which I list below. One thing I noticed is that the start and end cylinders reported by FDISK are all slightly different than those reported by Drakx during the install. This is true for *both* disks, not just the one with more than 1024 cylinders. The difference is just an "off-by-one" error and is probaly just due to differing conventions or something, but I have pointed it out just in case it turns out to be important! DrakX reported hda1 cylinder 0 to 2352 (FDISK says 1 to 2353, see below) hda5 cylinder 2353 to cylinder 2463 (FDISK says 2354 to 2464) ... hdc5 cylinder 0 to 37 (FDISK 1 to 38 hdc6 cylinder 38 to 87 (FDISK 39 to 88) and so on. I have no idea what this means or if it is a problem at all! So here is what FDISK had to say, on some detail :) (I have included the info it gave on the 20.4 GB drive as well for completeness, but it may be no longer relevant now that I have tried asking the installer to put the bootloader in various spots on both drives.) 1) For the 20.4 GB drive, containing the windows partitions, and the one that is larger than 1024 cylinders and hence possibly causing problems. "The number of cylinders on this disk is set to 2490. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups casue problems with 1) software that runs at boot-time (eg, old versions of LILO) 2) Booting and partitioning software from oter OS's(of DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)" Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2490 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065*512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System /dev/hda1 * 1 2353 18900441 c win95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hda2 2354 2490 11452+ f win95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 * 2354 2464 891576 83 Linux /dev/hda6 2465 2490 208813+ 83 Linux Swap 2) For the 6.4 GB drive, where I have *now* told it to put the bootloader (No warning this time as less than 1024 cylinders) Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 789 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065*512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System /dev/hdc1 * 1 789 6337611 5 Extended /dev/hdc5 1 38 83 Linux /dev/hdc6 39 88 82 Linux Swap /dev/hdc7 89 342 83 Linux /dev/hdc8 343 542 83 Linux /dev/hdc9 543 789 83 Linux Ok, so now I have tried putting the bootloader on both drives. The one with > 1024 cylinders was giving the "01 01 01" error and this is almost certainly a problem caused by the large size. However it still seems strange as I would have thought the installer would warn if this was likely to be a problem. When I put it on the second, smaller drive (<1024 cylinders) it still won't boot but the error message is different, it just says "Boot Failure" and there are no "01 01 01"s I also tried booting from boot floppy created by installer but get "Error 0x10" So at the moment I am still stuck with the only way in being to use the original installer-floppy to boot in using "rescue" mode. I am very much at a loss as to why the bootloader won't work on *either* disk, has anyone got any suggestions as to why it still won't work even on the 6.4 GB drive? Also, should I be using Grub, LILO with graphical interface, or lILO with text interface? Is it likely to make any difference? Perhaps I should do a complete reinstall now, to clear up whatever it may have done to hdc, and this time ask it to use hdc5? Since I *can* actually mount the hdc5 partition when I boot in using rescue mode from the install floppy, is there anything I should be looking at here (log files etc) to figure out why the bootloader won't work? How can I start Xwin given that i am booting in rescue mode and then moutning the hdc5 root partition? Is this even possible? If I could do that then I could run netscape and view the documentation and maybe try a few things without having to constantly reboot into windows. Can I do this using lynx? Do I need XWIN to run lynx (prob not) Can I view the man and info files whilst in rescue mode? I am keen actually to get Xwin up and to have the system in the state that the "User's Manual" describes and then go through chapters 7 to 11 of the guide, learning to use the desktop and linux as I go, it is very difficult just being givem a command prompt and a set of directories. I know if I was a Unix-wiz this would all be fine but hey I'm not the idea is to learn!! I have *used* unix before at uni but always very much as a single user, not as an administrator who has to set up the system and get the bloody bootloader to work!! Anyway enough of a whinge :) To summarise: I need help!!!! Thanks again Wendy Langer ->-----Original Message----- ->From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ->[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of civileme ->Sent: Sunday, 23 September 2001 4:37 ->To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Wendy Langer ->Subject: Re: [newbie] Bootloader doesn't work after clean install of ->Mandrake 8.0 -> -> ->On Sunday 23 September 2001 01:22, Wendy Langer wrote: ->> ->-----Original Message----- ->> ->From: Wendy Langer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] ->> ->Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2001 9:58 ->> ->To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ->> ->Cc: Teresa ->> ->Subject: Bootloader doesn't work after clean install of Mandrake 8.0 ->> -> ->> -> ->> ->Hello everybody, ->> -> ->> ->Aarlier I was having problems getting my SCSI card recognised ->> ->(the aha1510), however I swapped it for an aha1542A and that ->> ->problem now seems to be resolved :) ->> -> ->> ->I am now having another problem though...I have tried to install ->> ->Mandrake 8.0 onto a second hard-drive (my first drive has ->> ->windows), and although the install seems to all go ok, after ->> ->finishing the install then rebooting, the bootloader doesn't seem ->> ->to work. ->> -> ->> ->I get a few messages from the BIOS, then "searching for boot ->> ->record on IDE-0" (my main hard-drive, where the windows ->> ->partitions are, and also where I *think* I told it to put the ->> ->boot - loader) ->> -> ->> ->Then it just starts spewing out 1s and 0s like this across the ->> ->screen "01 01 01 01 01 01 " except it goes on forever!! ->> -> ->> ->It's definitely done *something* to the start of my first ->> ->hard-drive (BIOS IDE-0) as it now can't load windows either, it ->> ->has clearly written something over the master boot-record here ->> ->but whatever it has written isn't working! ->> -> ->> ->I can boot to DOS using a boot disk, but to get it to boot to ->> ->windows I have to do "fdisk /mbr" (not sure why really, I thought ->> ->if you booted from floppy you didn't need the MBR anyway but ->> ->clearly something I don't understand here.) ->> -> ->> ->This of course wipes over whatever the Mandrake installer did, ->> ->but at least I can boot windows to read docs and send emails :) ->> -> ->> ->I can boot into Mandrake using the install floppy in rescue mode, ->> ->and I can mount the root partition (hdc5) from here using "mount ->> ->-t ext2 /dev/hdc5 /newroot" where "/newroot" is a directory I ->> ->created as mountpoint just to test this out. ->> -> ->> ->So from here I ought to be able to look at some log messages and ->> ->figure out what is going on. and then somehow reinstall the ->> ->bootloader properly? I don't know where to begin though!!! What ->> ->messages should IO view? How would I go about repairing a boot-loader? ->> -> ->> ->I have actually been through the install program on the disk ->> ->twice completely and a few other times in "update" or "expert" ->> ->mode and am getting very sick of it, so if there is anyway of ->> ->fixing this without another complete install, I would be ->> ->thrilled. At the moment *even* another complete install would be ->> ->ok IF it worked!!! Just don't wanna do it agian and have it ->> ->*still* not working! ->> -> ->> -> ->> ->Ok, so here is a summary of my setup: ->> -> ->> ->AMD GA 71XE4 Motherboard ->> ->850 mHZ AMD Duron CPU ->> ->128MB RAM ->> ->Adaptec 1542A SCSI host adaptor with Matsushita cd-rom connected ->> ->(nothing else) - this scsi card is recognised by mandrake ->> ->installer but not currently by windows. ->> -> ->> ->2 Hard-Drives: ->> -> ->> ->1st Primary IDE (IDE-0 according to my BIOS) - Seagate 20.4 GB ->> ->2nd Primary IDE (IDE-1 according to my BIOS) - Samsung 6.4 GB ->> -> ->> ->Amd here is how I have partitioned it. ->> -> ->> ->Seagate 20.4GB (hda) (hda1) Windows 18GB ->> -> (hda5) *old* RedHat linix ->> ->partition 870 mb ->> -> (hda6) *old* RedHat swap ->> ->partition 203 mb ->> -> ->> -> ->> -> ->> ->Samsung 6.4GB (hdc) (hdc5) Mandrake / 300MB ->> -> (hdc6) Mandrake swap 392MB ->> -> (hdc7) Mandrake /usr 1.9GB ->> -> (hdc8) Mandrake /var 1.5GB ->> -> (hdc9) Mandrake /home 1.8GB ->> -> ->> -> ->> ->This info I wrote down whilst going through the install a second ->> ->time. I don't know what on the second drive it starts at hdc5 ->> ->instead of hdc1, I've never understood partitions, but hopefully ->> ->this is ok as it was pretty much auto-chosen by the wizard, I ->> ->just made the root partition a bit bigger and added a /var and a ->> ->/home as it was suggested in a book I am reading. ->> -> ->> ->the stuff on the 20.4 GB drive I just left alone, so this is how ->> ->it used to be and still is. ->> -> ->> -> ->> -> ->> ->When I got to the bootloader section, I chose "hda" for where to ->> ->put it. Actually, the first time I tried I was in "novice" mode ->> ->but it still defaulted to hda, definitely did *something* there ->> ->as I mentioned earlier, since it over-wrote the windows mbr! I ->> ->have tried at various points all three bootloader options - Grub, ->> ->LILO with graphical interface, and LILO with text interface. Some ->> ->very slight variation in error messages but basically the same ->> ->behaviour with each of these options. ->> -> ->> -> ->> ->So, to summarise, I have installed Mandrake on a second ->> ->hard-drive, and the install seems to have worked to the extent ->> ->that there is certainly *something* there on the /hdc5 partition. ->> ->I know this as I can boot in using rescue mode and mount it, it ->> ->looks like it is full of typical linuxey files and utilities and so ->> forth! -> ->> ->However, the bootloader is not working and has in fact ->> ->over-written my windows mbr, thus I have ended up wiping whatever ->> ->it did in order just to get back into windows. ->> -> ->> ->I now need to know what to next to get a working bootloader! ->> -> ->> ->Hopefully this will not require *another* complete reinstall as I ->> ->have already tried twice, however, even if it did, I would be ->> ->happy as long as whatever I end up after that works!! ->> -> ->> ->Thanks very much!!! ->> -> ->> -> :) Wendy Langer ->> -> -> ->Nice report. -> ->OK the 01 01 01 is usually a mismatch between drive geometry by ->the BIOS and ->by the bootloader. As a temporary measure you can put he boot ->sector on hdc5 ->(first sector of root partition) and make yourself a boot floppy. -> ->To do this put in your install CD, select expert mode Update and ->let it fuss ->and cluck for a couple of minutes figuring out it doesn't have ->any packages ->to add, the it will zip on down to bootloader and X installation ->where you ->can make the change. -> ->Civileme -> -> ->
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