Dual boot install onto 2 HD Windows XP system blew up

[DavidBeoulve]

I'm installed Mandrake 8.1 (3 CD ISO online distribution, 2 CD's required) on this system:

Duron 850 CPU
Windows XP on:
8 gig HD NTFS (with OS)
10 gig HD NTFS (empty)
512 RAM
GeoForce 2 MX
Yamaha soundcard

I ran the "recommended" install, figuring LILO? would eat the NT bootloader and everyone would be happy in a dual-boot way.

I choose HDD1 (the 10 gig drive) and let the installer auto-configure the partitions, installed Mandrake, and removed all bootable media when finished.

The computer rebooted, counted RAM, found devices, found no bootable CD's, tried booting from the hard drive, and printed out this:
"L 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 ..."

It goes on indefinately. PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!

I don't care if I have to rebuild the whole system from scratch, I backed everything up and have a second computer (which I'm on right now). Just someone tell me what's happened, why the boot loader isn't working and how to rebuild a working PC from here.

I've built Windows PCs from parts to OS, but never Linux.

My thanks in advance.

David.

http://www.afn.org/~afn26470/

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

This is a geometry error in trying to read the drive. What you can try is to re-install lilo with the 'linear' parameter specified.

Did you make a boot floppy ? If so, the easiest would be to boot from that to linux, edit /etc/lilo.conf as root to add the 'linear' paramter, then update the binary boot record with the command '/sbin/lilo -v', reboot and try again. You can probably boot from the Mandrake CD and get into linux too.

Also, you really need to setup lilo to chain load the NT/W2K/XP bootloader to get it to dual boot properly. I'll give you an example once you've got lilo booting properly from the harddiak.

Alternatively, you could do it the other way around and keep the M$ boot loader, install lilo in you linux /boot partition (instead of the master boot record) and get the M$ boot loader to chainload that. For that see -->

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

Regards

 

[DavidBeoulve]

Actually, Mandrake needed to be on the master drive of the primary IDE cable, and XP on the master drive of the secondary IDE cable. Once I switched XP to IDE2 (and reinstalled Mandrake) everything worked snazzy.

http://www.afn.org/~afn26470/