[97318] in RedHat Linux List
Micron PII-400 Dual Boot Problems (With 2 Western Digital Drives)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris J. Manders)
Mon Nov 2 15:38:35 1998
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 12:31:34 -0800 (PST)
From: "Chris J. Manders" <cmanders@mh1.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: "Chris J. Manders" <cmanders@mh1.lbl.gov>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Hello everyone,
I have this *great* Micron machine here with one of the new Packet-Engines
Gigabit Ethernet cards, and _2_ western digital 4GB drives. This has 128MB RAM,
and _everything_ is built into the m/b. It also has one of those *great* Diamond
RIVA128 cards in a slot. the gigethernet card is also PCI.
The owner had put the latest WinNT 4.0 Server with SP3 on the master disk (set
with the WD drive set as a single only [i.e. the slave/master jumper was not
doing anything but occupying space sideways]...;) At that time there was only
the one disk. Oh, and it is entirely NTFS.
These are IDE drives, so I can mention the other channels for help ;)
On the 1st channel are a ZIP and a CDROM,
On the 2nd are those 2 WD IDE drives.
Now the user is looking for a dual boot. So, I jumpered the original drive as a
slave, and the new one as a master (both _are_ WD). The reason is this: we use
System Commander and it takes a DOS partition to run off of. So, I booted off a
Win98 disk with sys.com, fdisk, format and all that good stuff. I created a
partition on the new 1st drive of 20MB. I 'sys'ed it after fdisking the 20MB
partition and formatting it. I then installed syscommander c:\sc. I ran the
scin.exe utility, it saw the NT, but hangs when booting. No soft-boot possible
after the hang. A hard off is necessary.
So, taking chances I went ahead and partitioned a second Primary partition and
installed RedHat on the first disk creating a part. for the Linux and its swap
(last part.) RedHat loads with not a single hitch.
I then reboot and of course SC doesn't show up as the MBR was overwritten with
LILO. So, at LILO there is the DOS and the Linux. _Both_ DOS and Linux BOOT at
this point! I then reboot into DOS (as the manual says) and reran scin.exe.
Wha-La! Linux is NOT there! So, using the techniques I've used before I went
ahead and defined a partition and Menu Item in SC for it pointing to the MBR on
the 1st drive.
Now, I reboot and get the nifty menu:
DOS
RedHat
Windows NT
Floppy
Well, the DOS works great (floppy too). I get a prompt within seconds. The other
two OSes, however, hang. Linux at least lets me soft-boot out, but not the NT.
I have tried all number of jumper configs with this, reinstalling after
repartitioning, and all that. I am starting to think WD is the problem. I know
these drives are not great, but this _should_ work.
The interesting part is that ALONE, each drive BOOTS (in stand-alone mode) even
after all this!
One other tidbit that might be of importance: The FIRST install of Sys Commander
showed an error about the BOOT MBR possibly having a virus. Well, knowing that
might be LILO I ignored it. However, if I do any internal changes in the options
in the Sys Commanders Menu I get that same error. I am definately NOT booting
the swap partition either.
Any ideas appreciated.
Thanks!
--Chris
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