Not a newbie..but a newbie question, I guess. Have the funky abit be6-2 mobo with HPT Ultra DMA controller.
Back in the days of 2.2.xxx I had to disable the UDMA and plug HD into IDE channel to get linux to boot. This was all fixed in 2.4.xxx--great!
Upgrading to 2.6.xxx, grub won't boot linux...not even if I use the trick of disabling UDMA, plugging HD into IDE channel, and going into BIOS to make HD0 my first boot disk. This always worked before...even with BeOS.
Tried several different distros, all choked at boot. I am back to using Mandrake 9.1, but would like to upgrade. Any help appreciated.

dale

Choked??? An actual error message might help someone help you.

Have you tried installing GRUB on a floppy and booting from the floppy? GRUB would still need to read the HDs, but the exercise could be interesting.

Yeah, tried that trick, too.
Grub starts, shows all the kernel info and location, shows the initrd info and location then boots to a blank screen.
I went back to the 2.4 kernel...grub finds kernel and system boots up as it always did. BTW, this happens no matter what flavor distro I use. Mandrake Fedora, Ubuntu. Any with the 2.6 kernel won't boot. There used to be a patch for the 2.2 kernel to get it to recognize the HTP366 controller. This was incorporated into the kernel in the 2.4 flavor. Maybe this hardware patch was forgotten in the 2.6 kernel.
Thanks for your help.

dale