Trying to run 9 partitions plus a swap partition on a Maxtor 100GB drive. Each partition set at 10GB. Grub installed via Knoppix 4.02 cdrom install into MBR. Formatted drive with all logical partitions within a full drive extended partition. Knoppix 4.0 installed on hda5.

Any version of linux installed past hda7 (approx 30GB) will not boot from grub boot menu after editing the boot menu accordingly. Boot process just stalls.

This is an Asus p4s800d-x mother board replacing an ECS Elite 648fx-a mother board. Processor is an Intel P-4 1.6 GHz. Running 512 MgB Crucial 2700 DDR ram. Drive is connected as master on the primary IDE board connector. Replacing the 100GB Maxtor drive did not fix the problem.

Found some information indicating that I may have an issue with the BIOS on the Asus board not having 48 bit addressing capability to the hard drive.

Did not have this problem with the old ECS board and the same Maxtor drive. Seems I may have made a poor choice of mother boards.


Suggestions welcome

It is possible to switch LBA adressing on in the mainboard bios?

Is their a BIOS upgrade you could try?

perhaps it would be a good idea to install first all the linux partitions and grub after the latest installed version, otherwise you could have the mentioned problem...

Thanks for all the replies. The BIOS setting for LBA is on/off. Bios version is the latest posted on the Asus tech web site. Have not tried to load GRUB last after installing different linux 'flavors'. However, any installs/reinstalls of any version into partition hda5,hda6 or hda7 work without problems.

The Asus tech site wants to much personal informatin to post a question.

If this is true, you are SOL. Once Linux is active, it doesn't use the BIOS, so you'll be o.k.
You may have to rethink your layout, or ditch the mobo - that is seriously crappy in this day and age.

I'm going to try the 100GB Maxtor drive on the secondary IDE channel and make an 80GB WD drive my primary before I reinstall the old Elite motherboard. Hope springs eternal?