Dual Boot Error
 

Hello all,

I have two hard drives, both Maxtors, one that is 40-Gig and the other is 80-Gig. I am trying install Microsoft XP on the 40, which is the master, and Mandrake 10 on the other, which is the slave.

Xp was loaded first and worked. Mandrake was then installed to the second drive, using the auto allocate and the boot loader was installed at the beginning of the drive, the 80-gig.

After the installation and reboot, the computer just shows:

L 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07.......

Any ideas would be warmly excepted......
Thanks,
Eric.

if you created a boot disk (i hope you did) then boot into linux and do this:
if you didn't, and might have an XP boot disk, boot into windows, and issue the command
this will salvage you master boot record. You'll at least be able to boot into Windows again.
If you don't have boot disks for either OS (*doh!*), reinstall mandrake, and reinstall LILO AND CREATE A BOOT DISK when it asks you to.
Hope this helps, I had the same problem.
--John

Scuzzman,

Thanks for helping out.....

I suppose that I should have mentioned that but the boot disks do not work. I am at a loss here. How did you fix this?

Microsoft as maybe the slave and Linux as the master?

Thanks again,
Eric.

as i said... i fixed it by reinstalling mandrake, and thus reinstalling LILO
if you put in an installation CD, you *should* be able, when it says "Press Enter to install or etc..."
to type windows and this should get you into win, where you can fdisk /mbr adn repair your master boot record

Okay, I'll give it a stab.....thanks again for helping out!

Eric.

There are a number of ways.It looks that yor lilo has been overwritten.Boot using the mandrake CD , instead of entering into install , go for the other option--more options by pressing F2 (is it?), and choose the option reinstall boot loader.
The other good option and the best option is--there is a 3rd party free boot manager available--GAG(do a bit googling.It is just 300KB).fairly easy to use.You can directly create a key for the / partition and you can log into linux.
Help regarding GAG--see the instructions , else this thread is there!

You didn't by chance have another O/S on the drive before you loaded linux, Did you? XP is real wierd about this, and I have the same problem, because I had win9x on c drive when I loaded xp, then Later I replaced the drive, and loaded linux and get the same error. XP doesn't like changes. I had the same problem before with another machine, just because I changed to a rounded Ide cable from a ribbon.. Another thing that could haved caused this is if the slave was formatted to a fat32. which would have put xp on drive D or E, and when you loaded linux it change the format and made it unrecognizable by xp. Make sure your slave is raw so XP loads on C.

Danoh.......you got it, XP was on the drive where I was trying to put Linux. Looks like I needed to use Mandrake to formate the drive first....then it worked.

Hiraendu.........you got it as well, I think that I kept putting the boot-loader in the first sector of the drive.........and somehow the was getting over written. Using GAG it ended up working.


Thanks a bunch, I feel kind of silly knowing that it took: one week, two screw-drives and a hack-saw modification to the case to get the thing working..............

Thanks again,
Eric.