Mbr Issues
 

Ok i have been posting on the mandrake forum as well i managed to find it via looking through this site.

just so i can get a response that may work, i am posting here to

i have 2 hd's

hda = windows, swap, progs,games,dls, empty(not really empty anymore gf found it : o( )

hdb = linux root, swap, usr, var, home

windows installation = fine
mandrake seems fine.

computer reboots, and the first load screen ( i use a dell 4550) loads fine then when the os loads i get
L07070707070707

now on the the previous board it told me about fixmbr command in windows repair, the rescue mode reinstall of win mbr failed. but the fix worked ( wish i knew this a few day ago (installed windows to many times alread)

so i am now back on windows.

my bios was meantioned so i updated it, and now have the most recent that dell has released for my mobo.
i installed the lilo to /dev/hda which i take as the mbr
unfortunatly that produces the L0707070707 error i have tried with grub and i get GRUB

now i really like mandrake from when i was using it, (Move, and switching jumpers on my hd so i could login on different os)

so please if anyone has experienced this problem and knows how to bypass/fix reply!!!!


thank you to all the people who have given me support so far on various topics.

Damnation

Create /boot
 

Hi,

Try this. Create a small partition, say 100MB that is used for /boot. Make sure the partition is within the first 8GB of hdb. Ideally you should put it first. I guess you understand what I'm talking about. If not ask for more help here.

-Sarav

i'll go do that now.
hopefully that'll work.

will post back my results although this has been utterly annoying and my pc was about to get a pure asswhooping, been quite educational thanx for your help.!

well once again bad news

had :

boot, root, swap, usr , var , home

didn't ask me where to install the boot, but the lilo installed to /dev/hda

and once again a screen of L07070707070707070707

put in my win cd, and went to repair then fixmbr and vola mbr sorted. it has somthing to do with lilo and my mbr on my master hd.

linux is on my slave mb. hmmm god i wish i knew how to resolve this o well lots of forum posts by me and lots of answers by you wonderful people should resolve the issue and educate me some more : oP

anyways thanx for the help so far anyway.

You reinstalled so soon?
 

What!! you reinstalled mandrake so soon? What I meant was reinstall Mandrake and when it gives you option to create partitions, create a 100MB partition at the start of hdb and allocate it to /boot. Then create other partitions like /, /home and swap. Then install Lilo the the primary hard disk (hda) MBR. Then hopefully everything should work fine. Did you do what I have mentioned above and it still didn't work?

-Sarav

yes i did it so soon, installing linux is quite quick : o)

i dunno what happened but my pc has got faster recently i dunno what it is anyway

yes i did

i cleared all partitions.

and built it like this


hdb | /boot, /root, /swap, /usr, /var, /home

and it still failed and i installed Lilo to mbr (/dev/hda)

well it wanted to go there so me being nice let it, and still just a screen or L07070707070707070707

anything else you can suggest? i could reinstall windows with /boot on hda at the beginning then
the C: drive ?

Hmm... no idea if that will work. I'm lost. I know GRUB doesn't have this problem. I use FC3 and no /boot and my / is waaaay after 100GB.

Sorry I'm unable to help. Do post back if you fix this problem.

-Sarav.

i seem to be the only person experiencing this o_O
trust me this sucks, what i am going to try is wipeing

C,E,F
placing C in with 5gb placing a /boot after that
then a 4gb swap for windows then a new programs directory.

hopefully that'll work, well wish me luck : o)

Sounds like a disk controller problem - the "07" is "invalid initialization".
This is being returned from the BIOS.

Check your BIOS options. If you can't see anything, try taking out the Windows disk (just disconnect the power), and try the Mandrake install again. See if that boots successfully before putting the Win disk back in service.
Not a long-term solution, but may help to isolate the error.

well u haven't seen my previous post, yes that works, thats how i started, then i just switched jumpers to load different os's

BUT THE GOOD NEWS

sorry for caps i am happy

i reinstalled i think the issue for me was the 2 hds so what i did was

hd1 = windows(6gb) /boot(100mb) /root(5gb) rest of space partitioned
hd2 = /var /usr / home jolene(7.5gb, hd for my gf so she doesn't loose her files when/if i kill windows)

and now they boot fine infact, i got the lilo boot loader to login to my windows this time.

only thing left to do now is turn off some of those stupid services in windows and manual a few others, get my programs on temp.

make linux look pritty and hopefully my external modem be here tomorrow and rwar i'll be online with that then.

anyways thank you for all your help, i shall certinally be trying to help others on here, with the little knowledge i know now, and the vast i should gain over time.

thank you all for the help and support i was given!

Mbr Issues - I had this too
 

I too got the lilo numbers screen - mine was 9's or 010101010101. This was on Dell 2450 Poweredge server using PERC card for hardware RAID.
The trick to getting past this was that /boot *must* had to be set to primary. To do this in Mandrake, when you install, during the partitioning process, select expert mode, delete your /boot, recreate /boot as whatever filesystem you're happy with and select the last drop down - set this to primary. Later in the install, you will be prompted for your bootloader location - the default MBR option is correct.

Hope this helps someone else out there banging their head against the wall. I wasted a good deal of time finding this out.

Scattamah