Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 16:56:09 +0200 From: "Siegbert Baude" <Siegbert.Baude@gmx.de> To: "Cherie & John Carri" <cjcarri@earthlink.net> Cc: <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Can FreeBSD make a hard drive unbootable by other OS's ? Message-ID: <002701c238a2$687bdac0$406a3c86@whwurm.uniulm.de> References: <KJD9TN32KIEBJH4YBADCXVMG4ZMGDB6.3d4740d5@sparky>
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> > For various reasons, I am now attempting to use this hard drive on > >another PC. The drive shows up normally in the BIOS, and I was able > to > >install Mandrake Linux 8.2 on it with no problems; using a shareware > >utility called Boot It Lite, I was able to verify that the drive does > >contain the 4 Linux partitions I created during the Linux install > >(/boot, swap, /, and /home). However the PC will not boot from the hard > >drive. (Yes, the BIOS is set to boot from first the floppy, then the > >CDROM, and then the hard drive in question. Yes, the /boot partition is > >completely below 1 Gig to avoid any LILO issues). > Try changing the boot order in the BIOS so the hard drive comes before > the CDROM. Other things to check: Where did you tell Mandrake to install it's lilo? If it's a Linux only disk, the correct place would be the MBR. If you've chosen to install it in a partition, look if this one is set active (i.e. bootable). If your computer's BIOS is quite old, the 1024 cylinder problem could touch you (that is not a 1Gig border). Depending on your BIOS and mapping of your disk, this can be any value from 512MB (on old BIOS without EIDE support) to 8GB (1024 cylinders with a single cylinder set to the maximum value). Side note: To have any boot sector above 8GB you independently oft the OS need a BIOS, which supports IRQ13 extension and in addition for Linux you have to use the LBA flag on lilo. If you are able to boot from the Linux-CD, go there into a console, write down all the settings fdisk shows about your partition layout, do the "dd" steps mentioned in the other thread, redo fdisk with exactly the same values you wrote down before, make sure you have the correct partition active, check your /etc/lilo.conf to install lilo in the MBR (i.e. /dev/hda not /dev/hda1) and start /sbin/lilo once again. If you then face any problems, it is not because of earlier FreeBSD use of this disk, as after the "dd" step the disk completely forgot about this. If you make some errors within the fdisk steps, so that your partition layout isn't exactly again what it is now, you probably have to reinstall Linux. Ciao Siegbert To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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