Dual boot with BIOS twist Question
 

Hello Hello...

Set up: have win2k running on hda1.
disconnected hda1 and plugged in second hd

Installed mandrake 9.2 on it. - Works

Reconnected Win2k Drive and moved Mandrake disk back to hdb
(mandrake on hdb5).

When booting been using the bios to select which drive to boot from
which works fine, lilo has the mbr on hdb.

Todays learning project - try to config lilo to be able to boot 2k.
Have books, read forums, tried lin docs project (which I really do not find helpfull :scratch: )

Feel silly i'm not able to resolve this without posting here :(

Right now - 2k on hda1 / linux on hdb5.

Lilo is bootloader (on hdb) and says:
----------------------------------------------------

boot=/dev/hdb
map=/boot/map
default="linux"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
disk=/dev/hdb bios=0x80

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hdb5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=ht splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hdb5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=ht"
read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hdb5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=nomount hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi acpi=ht failsafe"
read-only

other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda

other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

----------------------------------------------------

When I select "windows", it gives me 8-9 symbols/fractions and halts.
no reboot / other.. just halts and looks at me.

Everything looks good to me.... but i'm really feeling like a real :newbie:


Looking at this now..i'll try adding the below to the windows line...
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
read-only


Thanks for any help

Sorry that this reply is not helping you but,

Congratulations!

This is how a post should look. Gives all the information and you have tried to fix the issue yourself first. Unfortunately, I have no experience with multiple drives. ( I'm poor ) :)

Thanks blueCow. Always Nice to get feedback :)

I've done tech support etc and know how much I desire to just get the info without the extra stories and side trips...


I did try to add the info as per above (in green) into lilo.conf
but no differance.

I think:
Youthfullness is really about being able to accept and deal with being a noob agian as time marches on by new things .:cry: :D

btw blueCow - I may have 2 nice drives...but I'm still running my 2200+ cpu as a 1500+ because my BIOS doesn't reconize it! Too nervous to flash the bios until I know I have $ for a new mobo ...just in case... :p

Perhaps telling LILO to swap the drives over using a signal to the BIOS] would solve the problem.

map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81

In your case as you want to boot the first drive, using a boot manager on the second.

This always used to be necessary... It may not be with new versions of LILO.

Original Quote: [http://mosquitonet.stanford.edu/~zhao/second-disk.html]

Eh dere... well I've worked with this a little back and forth and now when I boot to windoz I
get a blinking cursor in the top left corner.

My windows portion of lilo.conf is this:
other=/dev/hda1
label="Windoz"
table=/dev/hda


Now when you say to change the map drive..

* currently I have this:

menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
disk=/dev/hdb bios=0x80
image=/boot/vmlinuz

--------------------------------------------------------

* what wish for me to do is this:

menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
disk=/dev/hdb bios=0x81
image=/boot/vmlinuz

yes?
if possible here..
what is it you think I have done that causing the problem (ie-> is it due to not having lilo on mbr of hda?)

I'm thinking that this change is to bridge a problem with windows booting without the BIOS pointing to it?
Boot info between BIOS to NTLD (grr...can't quite remember file name...) was minimal.. just bios starts it
up and it runs without too much looking back :scratch:

Part of the reason I've set it up this way is I sometimes take my HD with me to fix other's computers..
Plug it into their machine etc...etc....
Hence wanted to keep the MBR clean of any need for any info on another drive.

Thanks

other=/dev/hda
label=windoz
map-drive = 0x81
to = 0x80
map-drive = 0x80
to = 0x81
table=/dev/hda

Thanks jmorse / michaelk.

It's up and running now.
Smooth as a baby's bottom..but not one of those ugly babies..
the cute ones from the laundry and soap ads! :D


Next project of the day...set windows as default for the wife
and set auto mounts for her windows partition linked to the desktop :study:


Thanks for the help. I think it would have taken me a good while
to figure this one out on my own. :cool: