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Still a error 17. But i have been thinking something.
Dosnt hda stands for the first partition? And if so, hd0 is the ntfs partition, wich i dont have any linux on. And dosnt hda1 stand for the second partition? If so, then should i try to get hd0 to stand for the hda1 instead of hda? Or am i on a total wrong way here?
If you arrange the first booting device hda, which is the master disk hooked to the primary IDE cable, then the Bios will inform Grub hda is your (hd0). Similarly you can ask the BIos to boot sda first to take over the (hd0) position.
Basically the user control the (hd0) by nominating it as the first bootable disk. hda, sda etc are related to the physical connection points to the mobo but sata, scsi and USb disks all use sda, sdb etc and the naming convention depends on the number of devices hooked.
Grub counts everything from 0.
There is no better way to get information from the mouth of the horse and so you can in a Grub prompt type
The geometry command instructs Grub to list the partition details of the disk at the order it sees. NTFS partition has Type No 7 and Linux has 83 with 82 for swap. Looking the content of the disks you will have the absolute information what each disk is in the booting queue.
I ran sudo grub in the terminal, got the grub prompt.
So i ran find /boot/grub/stage1.
The result i got was "hd(0,1). If i understand right, this means that the boot disk is sett to the 1 partition on the first harddrive, where hd (0,0) would mean the main drive (or something like that).
So then i typed root (hd0,1) and got something like ext2fs 0x83 then i ran setup (hd0). Though this didnt work. Should i have used the makeactive command as so many pages say i should, and chainload +1?
I think im about to learn something and finaly make the bootloader work as it should, but in not quit there yet.
I think there is something else wrong. Maybe the way your BIOS treats the HDD - have you latest BIOS? Maybe your Linux partition is just too far from beginning of the HDD. In this case a small separate boot partition in the beginning of the HDD would help. (I'm not a GRUB expert, never had a problem with it, consequently never had to go in depth with it.)
I dont have the latest bios i think. I have a Fujitsu siemens computer, so i have not checked after bios updates for it.
I think i read somewhere that you could innstall grub to a floppy and use that as a bootloader. Though i have not managed to make one. Dont remember where i read that either.
As for the geometry command, this is the resault:
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 19457/255/63, The number of sectors = 312581808, /dev/hda
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
Partition num: 1, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 2, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
According to Post #35 it is the Linux partition with Type 83.
The hard disk is a hda which mean it is a Pata. It has 255 heads and 63 sectors and that is pretty standard.
Error 17 in Grub is can't mount the partition.
This is what I would do to tackle it.
On booting up a Grub screen, assuming you do have one I would press "c" key immediately to drop into a Grub prompt.
I can then either try to run Grub's configuration file by command
Code:
root (hd0,1)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst
Grub should load this file which if error free will fire up the Linux.
It it doesn't then I would ask Grub to display the content of it by
Code:
cat (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.lst
I would then type in the command line by line to boot it manually. This way if Grub is stuck then the line that causes the problem will be identified. After the last line, which should be the "initrd" statement, has been enter you need to add
Code:
boot
as the green light to Grub to fire up the system. The "boot" statement is not needed if booting automatically from a hard disk.
Post the /boot/grub/menu.lst here if you still have a problem.
In any case in a Grub prompt I expect the XP will be fire up by command
Code:
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot
If XP fires up then it tells us your Grub is good.
Hm, ok. So you spoke of LBA, i dont know quit what that is. I will also try to see if i might find a updates version of the BIOS my computer is running on.
Logical Block Addressing
Currently your GRUB files are located in HDD area which is not accessible for BIOS, thus not accessible for GRUB, too.
LBA can be turned on in the BIOS setup. If your BIOS cannot see the full capacity of your HDD then the only solution is to re-partition the hard disk and create a small 30 MB partition for /boot.
OK, think i have made some progress here. I went into the bios, found the cmos options, and the options for my primary disk. Sett that to manual and chosed from the list LBA.
Though, when i start the computer with a floppy with grub, and get into the grub command prompt, i still get the "Selevted cylinder exceed maximum supportet by bios" even though i have LBA turned on. Though i tried some commands (setup hd0) and now i get grub read error.
Hey, i managed to change the error messege, now its not 17 anymore, now it just plaine cant read the goddam thing. Man im full of good luck
If i remember correct the BIOS stated my HDD to be 138 Gb, though it is 150 gb. But non of those options made a correct "entry" of the sice, it was either 138 or 160.
I dont know what i did, how i did it or what the freaking happend. I went into the Bios again, selected Auto and LBA, rebooted and like a angle it poped up with the boot menu.
IT WORKS!!
Thanks a million times for the help, i cant explaine how happy i am right now. The boot menu workes now, it boots, everything works.
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