previous post, windows, and lilo

[nightmareDNS]

OKAY, in my previous post I was being stupid but thank you for the help, it cleared a lot of things up.

oh and mike147, congrats on moderator, you're doing good =)

so here's my new problem::

Earlier today I installed windows on my new 20 gig hard drive that I got yesterday. I did this by taking out my linux drive, making my new drive the primary master, and installing windows normally on it (windows 98)

When I put the linux drive back in as the primary master, changed the new drive to the secondary master, and booted linux. I can now mount the drive just fine, and it shows me that it's got windows on it, like this...

[root@nightmare mike]# mount /dev/hdc1 /mnt/win
[root@nightmare mike]# cd /mnt/win
[root@nightmare win]# ls
My Documents bootlog.prv command.com io.sys netlog.txt system.1st
Program Files bootlog.txt config.sys msdos.--- setuplog.txt windows
autoexec.bat cabs detlog.txt msdos.sys suhdlog.dat

and when I go to view lilo I've got this option in there::

other=/dev/hdc1
label=windows

and I can run lilo without any errors, but when I go to load windows at startup, I get::

LOADING WINDOWS

and that's all, it just hangs there.

I'm assuming I didn't do something right, any help is appreciated.

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peace®

[downtime]

I think it's because windows is seeing two hdds numbered 128, or hd0. I don't know if lilo is capable of a drive swap. You could check out sbm, it can do the drive swap. http://www.gnuchina.org/~suzhe/index.php3?body=docs/user-guide.html
It's a linux based bootloader. I haven't tried it, but it looks good. Another thing you could try is make the windows drive master, boot linux from a floppy, and reinstall lilo to the mbr of that drive, or install www.xosl.org (http://www.xosl.org) to the windows boot, and use it instead of lilo. You may have to reinstall lilo to the superblock of the / partition to load it from xosl. Use ranish http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/
or mbrwork http://www.webdev.net/orca/mbrwork.htm
to copy your present mbrs, so you can always get back to where you are now without reinstalling everything if something goes wrong. An mbr backup can save you a day's work.

Rereading, lilo is already installed to the mbr of the linux drive, xosl could boot it from there, with a small edit to lilo.

[This message has been edited by downtime (edited 07-04-2001).]

[nightmareDNS]

Thanks for the help, first of all.

I don't think I was being too clear in the first post, but there is some info maybe I should pass on.

A few weeks ago before I bought this new hard drive, I got one donated to me from a friend, it was a 2 gig that he didn't need. Anyway, I did the exact same thing to it. I made it the priimary master, installed windows98, then took it out and made it the secondary master. I booted into linux, added that same line to lilo, ran lilo, and booted right into windows, no problem.


That said, could I have done anything diffeent this time that would cause it to not boot? Would switching drives around (i.e. making the windows 20gig the primary slave) matter?

DOn't get me wrong, I appreciate the help, but if I didn't have to install any automagical partitioning software or bootloaders before, I shouldn't now. Just wondering if there was something I missed.

Thanks.

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peace®

[downtime]

No, you're right. If it worked before, it should work again. You may be right about the slave, try switching it to primary slave, that does rings a bell.

[johngeeaswell]

Just a quick question ...

You set it on auto or did a "detect drive" in the bios for the windows drive ??....

Just mentioning it cuz ya never know .. you might have rushed or something .. hehe ..
I know I have ..

But everything sounds right ... If you added a section for "other" and your windows drive is a secondary master it should be hdc ...

You did an /sbin/lilo after the changes .. right .?.


I normally have mine the other way around where windows is the primary master /hda and linux is /hdc ... but it shouldn't make a difference really ......

...G...


[This message has been edited by johngeeaswell (edited 07-04-2001).]

[nightmareDNS]

John, and Downtime --


I appreciate the input., thanks for the help.


First of all John -


Yeah I ran sbin/lilo afterwards, but I have forgotten that in the past, hehe.
Bios autodetects everything correctly.


And some other random stuff -


At the redhat graphical boot prompt, if I hit Ctrl - X for text mode, then select windows, it says "Loading Windows" followed by "L?" and then freezes.


I can't find ANY documentation on L?, so I'm guessing it just doesn't know what to do after the first stage of loading.


Then I had this brilliant Idea. I made windows hda, linux hdc, and set my bios to boot the linux drive first so I could let it select windows as hda. Well, that didn't work. Now when I want to boot into windows I just have to switch the boot order in bios, which SUCKS!


Anyway, that's what I've done so far.

Oh, and as of now, windows is hdc and linux is hda.



[This message has been edited by nightmareDNS (edited 07-04-2001).]

[johngeeaswell]

Here's a list of the LILO errors (http://www3.sk.sympatico.ca/johngee/lin4.html).

I'm kinda stumped ....

If you wanted to switch them around you'd have to use a boot disk to get into linux and once in you would have to edit your lilo.conf (and fstab for that matter) write the MBR of the windows drive and try rebooting....
The boot disk would have to be altered or you would have to put the extra variables at the prompt so that it knows it's hdc etc....

Both drives are primary I take it .... does anyone know if that makes a difference ??... I wouldn't think it does but figured I'd mention it..... hehe ..

You're not trying to boot off of a highpoint controller or something are you ??... because that would need an append="ide=reverse"


[This message has been edited by johngeeaswell (edited 07-05-2001).]

[nightmareDNS]

I'm not trying to boot off some weird controller, standard IDE stuff.

OK, so I tried making linux hda and windows hdb, and tried to boot windows, but it still didn't work. I still got the L? error.

Also, the L? error isn't listed on your webpage, or anyone else's for that matter. That's the only reason I mentioned it, thought maybe someone would know.

so as it stands now, linux is hda, windows is hdb. This translates to::

Linux - primary master
Windows - Primary slave
CDROM - Secondary slave (cause I'm too lazy to change the jumper right now)

any more ideas will be appreciated =)

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peace®

[johngeeaswell]

Oh .. really .. It actually has a ?

I misunderstood .. I've never seen that one ..

sorry....

I'm at a loss.



[This message has been edited by johngeeaswell (edited 07-05-2001).]

[mikek147]

I think the problem is that you loaded MS Windows as C:\, and trying to run it as D:\. The problem is that all references to boot Windows is to C: not D:. If it worked before, I'm really at a loss as to how. If you could look at your system and user registry, system.ini and all of the rest of the Windows stuff, everyting is pointing to C:, which is now your Linux drive.

The normal approach to this is to load windows first to drive hda1(C:\) then load Linux to some other partition on hda or onto it's own disk hdb1 or hdc1. With only 2 hard drives, I prefer to have one as primary master and the other as secondary master. The cd can remain as secondary slave.

I would recommend that you move the Windows drive back to primary master.(remember to change the jumpers on the drive) This will solve the Windows problem. Then move your Linux drive to secondary master.(again, remember to adjust you jumpers) Once this is done, then re-install Linux in it's new location, using the partitions you have already created on the Linux drive. For the most part, it will just reload everything over itself, but it will also change all references from /dev/hda to /dev/hdc.

Unless anybody else here can come up with a good reason not to, I really think this is your only option to correct things. Good luck. -mk

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If it ain't broke, fix it till it is.