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djphazer 01-20-2005 09:19 AM

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
    label=WinXPNickOnly
    table=/dev/hda

HOWEVER - it will not boot the XP installation on the second drive, but instead does something very queer. The lilo.conf entry for the 2nd XP installation is:

Code:

other=/dev/hdb1
    label=WinXP
    table=/dev/hdb

This, for some reason, proceeds to boot the XP installation on the FIRST drive instead. The two XP installations are virtually identical, because I copied one to the other a long time ago. The boot.ini settings don't seem to matter, I changed the boot.ini on the second drive to boot itself from the second drive but the problem is, LILO doesn't seem to query the second hard drive at all, it just boots the same as the first hard drive.

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!

masand 01-20-2005 09:34 AM

is ur hdb1 partiton active??

post the contents of

fdisk -l /dev/hda

and

fdisk - l /dev/hdb

regards

djphazer 01-20-2005 01:37 PM

Here's the output of fdisk -l
Code:

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

  Device Boot    Start      End    Blocks  Id  System
/dev/hda1            1      1306  10490413+  7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2          1307      5222  31455270    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3          5223      5225    24097+  83  Linux
/dev/hda4          5226      6061  6715170    5  Extended
/dev/hda5          5226      5276    409626  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda6          5277      5407  1052226  83  Linux
/dev/hda7          5408      5538  1052226  83  Linux
/dev/hda8          5539      5669  1052226  83  Linux
/dev/hda9          5670      6061  3148708+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 19885 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes

  Device Boot    Start      End    Blocks  Id  System
/dev/hdb1  *        1    13627  6867756    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
    phys=(854, 254, 63) should be (854, 15, 63)
/dev/hdb2        13627    19875  3148740    c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary:
    phys=(1023, 254, 63) should be (1023, 15, 63)

So, yes hdb1 is marked active. The bootable flag doesn't seem to make a difference when booting from anything on hda. Hmmm... maybe I should fix those partition table errors... hehe :D. Those have been there forever. They don't seem to hurt anything.

So what do ya think?

masand 01-20-2005 02:08 PM

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

djphazer 01-20-2005 08:19 PM

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.

djphazer 01-22-2005 02:04 AM

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

masand 01-22-2005 02:20 AM

thanks for sharing the info!!

djphazer 01-24-2005 09:17 AM

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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