Problem Booting Linux Mandrake 7.2

[MarkUsG3]

Hi - Hopefully someone can help me out with this.

First, let me start with my system config.

P300/256 MB RAM, 1 6.4 GIG IDE Drive, one 4.5 GIG SCSI Hard Drive. AHA 2940 Adaptec SCSI Controller.

The system is configured to boot off the IDE drive, which currently has Windows 2000 Professional installed. I had been running Corel Linux off the SCSI drive and using it's version of the lilo boot loader without any problems. Yesterday, I went ahead and reformatted the SCSI drive and installed Linux Mandrake 7.2 and let it use the MBR on the IDE drive. The install went fine - but when it went to boot it only got as far as "Stage 1" and then halted. I could use the boot disk and boot without any problems. I then went ahead a used FDISK /MBR to erase the master boot record (this is correct yes?), and then the W2k bootloader took over (anyone care to explain why that happened, I figured I would have had to do a W2K bootsector repair?). I re-installed Mandrake (about 4 times now). Still have the same problem. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Mark

 

[MarkUsG3]

Help Please??

 

[rahvin]

Just a guess here but your lilo.conf file is probably not pointing to the SCSI drive when it goes to load. What is the error you get when lilo runs?

 

[MarkUsG3]

Actually - I believe it is using GRUB, not LILO. There is no error - it just hangs at "Stage 1" when booting. Grub is pointing to /dev/sda I believe which should be correct.

Mark

 

[SUOrangeman]

Can you boot with that lovely Linux boot floppy you made? if so, then the problem is not with the entire Linux install, just the boot loader.

BTW, repairing the Win2K boot menu is roughly equivalent to fdisk /mbr. Just brings the old stuff back.

-SUO

 

[MarkUsG3]

No problems with the floppy - like you said I'm pretty sure it's the boot loader, just not sure what the problem is as I've done the same type of config with other distributions w/o a problem.

Mark

 

[MarkUsG3]

Still no luck.. anyone else out there?

 

[coutch]

look in the grub man page, or try %> info grub, there might be a parameter to put in the grub config file that says to use SCSI when loading from the linux drive.

I think there was a parameter like that for LILO as well, never had to use it though (only IDE).

good luck.

 

[MarkUsG3]

I figured out the easy way to fix it, switch to LILO. Works fine now.

Mark