GRUB or LILO won't boot linux!!! for ANY distro
 

Hey guys,
This is my first post here and I really hope I can get some help, this problem is driving me nuts. I recently bought dual monitors and a Winfast Nvidia 6600GT to make a kick-ass linux box but unfortunatly I can't even boot ANY distro, at least not MEPIS,slackware,FC3, or SuSe. All of the distros lock up when it says grub loading stage 2...... I tried multiple boot managers (GAG,OsLoader etc..) and I'm assume that they must also be pointed to grub to work because they don't seem to load the kernel by themselves. When I point them to grub it just says GRUB on the screen and is locked up. Is there either...

1.A alternitive to grub and lilo

2.A way to just boot straight to linux without grub or lilo
(I have dual harddrives so if I can write something in the second HD's MBR than a boot manager could boot that and go straight to linux without a menu.)

3. A fix in a config file where grub might work, I know it must be the graphics driver because everything worked fine before I installed my 6600GT.


Any help would be great. Thanks!:Pengy:

Have you tried any of the live distros if so do they boot up? Is your problem in getting the system to install or to boot after installation? If you cannot install I doubt it would be a graphic issue as most installers use text based or generic SVGA drivers. Did you use Linux before getting the vid card, I am assuming so from your post. If this is the case have you tried re-installing the system, so long as you remount and do no reformat your home partition you should not lose all your info.

I always recommend a live CD around the house, realy useful things for saving friends and colleaguse computers when windows gets riddled with viruses and trojans and they have not backed up any work!

I tried the Live CD of MEPIS and it works great, the system installs fine and even booted once off of the slackware CDROM (the install CD gives you the option to boot a version of linux already on the HD). My pervious installs worked fine before I installed the new video card. I've tried reinstalling grub and lilo several times along with reformatings the partitions, I even tried installing grub in /root and booting but it still locks up, same with installing grub in either MBR. Its very odd, I though the bootloaders were text based too, I even did a "clasical text" based install on
GRUB and it still locks up. I'm not worried about losing any info. I was doing a clean install on my system anyway. I just want to get linux up and running on my system.

Seems the last check you have to do is on your new video card.. Does it work on Windows ?
Since Linux used to get installed okay with your former card, logic would say that the new one is faulty.
Sometimes hardware don't work out of the box at all. If it has some kind of warranty, bring it back and
get a new one..

The new video card works great in windows. Thats what I'm using right now until I can get linux back up and running again.

Hmmm, is this carding using PCI Express? If so, did the previous one use this technology? Which kernel are you using as I think PCI-E technology became supported in kernel 2.6.9 or summit

No, it is a regular AGP. Ther kernel version is 2.6.11 that I am trying to boot with, I also tried 2.4 to no avail.

Do you get any error message from Grub stage 2? If so, have a look here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...e2-errors.html

no there is no error message, it just locks up

Well, I have to confess I am stumped! In my understanding the passage from stage 1 to stage 2 is where GRUB looks for the main Linux part, for this a new graphics card shouldn't be an issue or it would at least have the decency to give you some sort of error message. If I understand correctly you have installed GRUB to the MBR of the first HDD and Windows loads fine, I assume you have tried putting GRUB on a bootdisk and using your old graphics card once more, just to check the problem isn't coincidental!

The problem sounds like it is to do with your hard drive layout, although it would be a strange coincidence. Also assuming GRUB responds to no key inputs such as the TAB, Shift or Enter key.

Sorry I cannot be of any real help, try booting and making a cup of tea, the brownian motion helps infinate improbability drives...

Well I got it working, it wasn't the videocard but the MBR is the first HD, it just so happened that the MBR of the first HD was messed from reloading bootloader after bootloader into it. I just pulled that one and installed everything on my second hard drive and it works fine.

Whoah, so I was write about something? Damn, I need a drink!

Here is a bit of information for future use:

1. With dual drives I found it easiest to use this tutorial to dual boot my computer. (I have Fedora Core 3 and WinXP): http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html
Using this tutorial you will usually have to remake the linux.bin file after every new kernel you add in, sometimes this isn't the case. It's best to see if you can boot first before remaking it. Best way to make it is to boot the distro in its form of rescue mode.

2. The 6000 series geforces will not work out of the box with most distrobutions that do not use the latest stable xorg. The VESA driver usually won't work either. I suggest booting into your respective distrobution in rescue mode or using telinit 3 and installing the nvidia drivers with your distros respective package management system.