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I had forgotten how much I hate bootloaders
http://forums.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6296		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:11 am ]
Post subject:  I had forgotten how much I hate bootloaders
Try as I might, I can't get my HD to boot. I've chrooted in, and run lilo. I've doen the same after editing the lilo.conf file. The drive once bore a Win2k install, but after the twentieth or so attempt, I zeroed out the MBR and installed again. Still no love. It's driving me batty!

The system in question is an AOpen cube, based on the NForce 2 MCP-T chipset.
Author:  Liv2Cod [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:14 am ]
Post subject: 
It may help if you describe exactly what your system does. Do you see any prompt at all? Does it just sit there? Do you have a parallel ATA disk as primary device on the first ATA interface? Do you have the CD-ROM as primary on the second interface? Do you have SATA instead? Some detail is needed before anyone can comment.
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:00 pm ]
Post subject: 
The system won't boot off the HD, it sees it fine but refuses to start the bootloader. "Non-system disk" error from the BIOS.

The setup is pretty textbook, hard drive (30GB ATA100 drive) is jumpered master and is on primary IDE, DVD-ROM drive is jumpered master on secondary IDE.

As near as I can tell, the install to the hard drive went through without an error. I can chroot to the drive just fine, the boot files all appear to be there. I run lilo and it processes things properly, no errors. But it won't boot.

Tonight will be a second go at it, and I'll see if the vanilla Knoppix distribution will install and boot.
Author:  cesman [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:04 pm ]
Post subject: 
Erase the MBR then rerun LILO.
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
I did that already:

stormsweeper wrote:
The drive once bore a Win2k install, but after the twentieth or so attempt, I zeroed out the MBR and installed again. Still no love. It's driving me batty!
Author:  tjc [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:36 pm ]
Post subject: 
Check that the hda1 partition is marked as bootable and that you've got the drive jumpered appropriately. I know that this is a PITA if it means tearing apart the machine but double check that you've either got everything jumpered for Cable Select (CS) and in the appropriate position on a CS cable or that you've got it MA and SL. Some BIOSes are really really picky about this. My old NForce 2 IGP (Shuttle SN41G2) just wasn't happy unless the drives were jumpered for CS. The symptoms were very similar.
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:52 pm ]
Post subject: 
I don't think it's a jumper issue, both drives are jumpered master, and at one point this setup booted into Win2k just fine. It just won't start lilo for some reason. The root partition is flagged bootable, unless cfdisk has decided to lie to me.
Author:  tjc [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:13 pm ]
Post subject: 
Wouldn't it be far more productive to try it rather than argue with me? What have you got to lose other than 20 minutes, some skin off your knuckles, and just maybe a problem that has you tearing your hair out?

This is a known issue. There's an FAQ entry about it. I've helped a number of people who've had the same problem. Based on past experience I'll even make a prediction about info you didn't provide, that it's a WD Caviar disk (that's where this problem is most commonly reported).
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 3:23 pm ]
Post subject: 
tjc wrote:
Wouldn't it be far more productive to try it rather than argue with me? What have you got to lose other than 20 minutes, some skin off your knuckles, and just maybe a problem that has you tearing your hair out?


Well, the hardware isn't in front of me (hardware is at home, I'm still at the office), so I can't try it out. I'll give it a shot tonight along with several other things I have planned (installing grub, trying another distro on this box, trying KnoppMyth on a different box, etc).

tjc wrote:
This is a known issue. There's an FAQ entry about it. I've helped a number of people who've had the same problem. Based on past experience I'll even make a prediction about info you didn't provide, that it's a WD Caviar disk (that's where this problem is most commonly reported).


It's an IBM drive I've used for a few years, 75GXP or something, I don't have it in front of me to check just now.

I read the FAQ and searched through here for various solutions, and I've tried everything else except changing it to Cable Select. I probably went through variations of installing and/or running lilo a couple dozen times last night before giving up for the night.

And it's not so much tearing my hair out as I was trying out KnoppMyth because it was supposed to be easier than building up from gentoo, or similar. :D I'm sure once I figure out where the gremlins are I'll be kicking myself, but for now I just have to take frequent Katamari breaks.
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
Well, it wasn't the jumper. The baseline Knoppix won't boot off the HD, either, so now it's time to try reinstalling Win2k (to see if that will still boot) and maybe throw this thing out the window.
Author:  Liv2Cod [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 8:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
Just to be technical, if you're getting the "non system disk" error this isn't a bootloader issue. The bootloader is never being loaded, so it's not the bootloader's fault you can't get started.

This is both good and bad news. The good news is there aren't many things to check. If you can see your disk in the BIOS settings (primary disk on the first controller) and everything is jumpered correctly, then the only other problem is the MBR and boot partition of the hard disk.

The bad news is that you report you have checked and rechecked these things and nothing is wrong. Dunno what to say.
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 8:29 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yeah, I just zeroed out the first megabyte on the drive, verified that the boot sector was all zeroes, used fdisk to write a blank DOS partition map, rebooted, and am now trying an auto install again. It's almost certainly a boot sector issue. All of this is separate from KnoppMyth, though, so I don't think I need to keep you guys up to speed for this portion of it. :D
Author:  tjc [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 10:48 pm ]
Post subject: 
You haven't got some kind of bootsector protection thing enabled in your BIOS by any chance do you? After you zero the first tracks and power cycle the drive does it still show as zeroed? (i.e. - is what you write to it what yu're getting back from it?)
Author:  stormsweeper [ Tue Oct 04, 2005 11:37 pm ]
Post subject: 
tjc wrote:
You haven't got some kind of bootsector protection thing enabled in your BIOS by any chance do you? After you zero the first tracks and power cycle the drive does it still show as zeroed? (i.e. - is what you write to it what yu're getting back from it?)


The options I can identify ("Boot sector protection" for example) are disabled. I just zeroes out the beginning of the drive, and installed win2k which boots just fine. I really am beginning to wonder if the BIOS is refusing to recognize anything besides a DOS/Windows drive signature. :?
Author:  cesman [ Wed Oct 05, 2005 12:06 am ]
Post subject: 
This might be the case if your BIOS has "virus" protection enabled.
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