weird problem getting WinXP to boot from LILO
I have a very odd problem. First, my drive partition setup:
Drive 0 - hda - primary drive on primary IDE (80GB) hda1 - NTFS - Main WinXP installation (10GB) hda2 - NTFS - Storage (30GB) hda3 - ext2 - Linux /boot partition (30MB or so) hda4 -hda5 - ext2 swap (400MB) -hda6 - ext2 - Linux root partition (1GB) -hda7 - ext2 - var partition (1 GB) -hda8 - ext2 - home partition (1 GB) -hda9 - ext2 - usr partition (3 GB) Drive 1 - hdb - secondary drive on primary IDE (10GB) hdb1 - NTFS - Alternate WinXP installation (6GB) hdb2 - FAT32 - Storage (4 GB) I have LILO installed in the MBR of the first drive. It will successfully boot into Linux (which is on the same drive.) It will also successfully boot my main XP installation on hda1 with these options in lilo.conf: Code:
other=/dev/hda1 Code:
other=/dev/hdb1 It should be noted that if I use the BIOS to boot from the second drive as the boot device, it loads that XP installation just fine. I have tried using other=/dev/hdb instead of hdb1 and omitting the table= line. I've also tried omitting the table= line with other=/dev/hdb1 but any reference to hdb seems to make LILO boot from the first hard drive anyway. Can anyone tell me what I can do with LILO or the boot.ini file(s) to boot hdb1 successfully? I want to have LILO as the only bootloader though... I don't want to have two selections in the NTLDR menu for the second drive installation. Thanks in advance! |
is ur hdb1 partiton active??
post the contents of fdisk -l /dev/hda and fdisk - l /dev/hdb regards |
Here's the output of fdisk -l
Code:
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders So what do ya think? |
hi there
if ur sure that it is the problem with hdb then remove ur hda , the u will ony have ur hdb only and try booting widows from that regards |
Well, like I said, I CAN boot from the hdb but what I'm trying to do is boot with LILO, which is on hda and then load the Windows installation on hdb. I know that hdb works and everything but the main problem is that when LILO tries to boot hdb, it instead loads XP from hda. The installations are almost identical except that there are different things installed on each.
I'm sure that having two XP installations that are identical is the reason it's doing this, but it's strange because it's not an error - it just doesn't do what it logically should. I think I remember a LILO option for mapping the primary and secondary drives to each other, so that it looks like they're switched... I might try that. Anyone at all have any ideas? All input would be appreciated. |
Boot Problem Resolved
I got it to work, thanx anyway for your effort.
I upgraded LILO to ver. 22.6 up from 22.2. That's not what made the difference but it helped because it has a new option "master-boot" which I put under the section for "other=/dev/hdb1". That option swaps the BIOS mappings for the master and slave drives and allowed hdb to boot thinking it was the master. I had to change the boot.ini entry back to disk(0) though. I am still baffled as to why it would do what it was doing, but it's fixed now... ...and replaced with another problem in Windows... Darn thing ain't good fer nuttin NE wayz... Now the problem is that when I boot into either WinXP drive, after I log in and stuff, the D: partition doesn't show up because it is mysteriously marked "hidden". I have to use my partition manager to unhide it every time, but after I reboot it's hidden again. Literally: when I boot hda1, hda2 is hidden from Windows; when I boot from hdb1, hdb2 is hidden. When I boot on hda1, though, hdb1 and hdb2 are still accessible. I have verified that this new problem is NOT being caused by booting from LILO, because the partition still shows up hidden if I boot directly from the hdb drive. EDIT: I was mistaken here, because LILO was at fault; when I booted directly from hdb using the BIOS, I had forgotten to unhide the partition again. I'm sure I'll figure it out; any insight would be appreciated. Otherwise, my problem is resolved and this thread is concluded. Peace, -DJ Phazer |
thanks for sharing the info!!
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In case anyone is interested, it seems my hidden partition problem is addressed here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=33831 -Nick |
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