Here's my problem (and I know that there have been lots of threads about a similar problem, but I've already tried these solutions, but they don't work ) :

I've got a 160Gig HDD with Windows on it and an old 40Gig HDD with SuSE 9.0 Pro on it and the Grub loads via floppy. Now I want to get rid of the 40Gig HDD, because it's to noisy. The problem is that if I unplug that HDD the Grub loader says "Hard Disk Error" ... I do understand that, because the Grub loads and doesn't find the HDD with Linux on it. BUT if I take the floppy out of the drive and leave the HDD unplugged it should boot normally? No ... it says "No system disk or system disk error" !

I really don't understand what I did there ... and especially, I don't know how to fix it ... as I said I've already tried the "fixmbr" in the windows recovery console and the "fdisk /mbr" on the windows boot floppy ... and I tried the "fixboot" in the recovery console ... and it says to me that the HDD with Linux on it is the system partition ! I think that could be the problem, but I don't know how to fix that either ...

I've done enough talking for now ... hope there's someone who can help me out of that mess ... would be great !

cyall Snowlord

It's because GRUB is looking on your 2nd disk for the /boot partition

GRUB lives on HD0, but it's looking for HD1 for it's boot config

I'm not sure if GRUB can boot with just a Windows partition.

Can you boot into Windows with a floppy or through GRUB? Try going into the Storage Manager in Control Panel and setting your "C:" partition as primary

Then you could try fdisk /mbr or fixmbr again

-or-

grub> root (hd0)
grub> setup (hd0)



Might be an idea to backup you windows drive first!

That's what I already said ... I understand why it doesn't work, if I unplugg the second HDD and the floppy's still inserted ... but if the floppy's not in the drive, the grub should not boot I think ...

Well if both HDD's are connected without problems, but if the second is unplugged or if the floppy isn't inserted not ...

I'll try your hint with the storage manager and I'll post the result of it

cya soon

http://snowlord.dyndns.org/HDDs.jpg
In Windows itself it's right, I think ?

Grub can boot with just a Windows partition, see my earlier post today.

What version of Windows are you using?

A 40 gb hard drive is pretty cheap today, got to be worth getting one to avoid using Windows if possible ??

Did you install grub on the primary hard disk MBR ?

If so, Windows will not load because it wants the MBR for itself and the grub 512 byte loader will result in Windows not starting.

To get windows to start using grub enter the following :-

grub> rootnoverify (hd0,0) (I am assuming Windows is on the first partition of the first hard drive)

grub> makeactive

grub> chainloader +1 (Sets the first sector of the current root partition)

grub> boot (Starts the boot process and quits grub)

Good luck,

Well I'm using Windows XP Home SP2 (normally) and SuSE Linux 9.0 Pro (seldomly)! As I said both Systems work well ... but as I don't use Linux very often and the HDD makes a lot of noise, I would like to unplug it ... but then the system won't boot anymore as I said ...

First I used it booting via floppy, because I didn't want to change anything in the MBR, but today I put it in the hda's MBR, but without changes ... without floppy won't work ... and without hdb neither !

I just want to clear out every trace of the Grub, so that I CAN boot with only the silent 160Gig HDD ... and the best were if I could plug the 40Gig HDD and boot the Grub via floppy, if I need Linux, but don't know how ...

cyall

When you reboot the computer, do you end up with a grub prompt as below

grub>

If so, enter the commands from my earlier post, and it should boot Windows for you.

If you want to re-write the MBR, get an old Windows 98 start up disk, boot the computer using the floppy drive, and enter at the "a>" prompt "fdisk /mbr"

This will cause fdisk to re-write the MBR in the way that Windows likes, and XP should then become bootable

Well in the first post I've written that I've already tried the fixmbr (and fixboot) and the fdisk /mbr, too without succes ... and the error messages I get are in that post, too

cya

Look at the motherboard BIOS, is the 160GB or 40GB set to boot first?

@methuselah

No it reboots normally ... and after the CMOS procedure the same thing happens ...

@michaelk

The 160 is Primary Master and the 40 Primary Slave (Both on Cableselect)

I just want to remove that damn Grub (and the "fixmbr" thingi doesn't work as it seems ...)

Well found a fix in some way ...

- put the grub on the mbr of the 40Gig HDD,
- took it out, and
- used the serillelo 2 (or how is that called?) and plugged my 160Gig HDD on the S-ATA port ... the S-ATA boots the HDD before the message appears ^^

I know that if I use the IDE controller again the problem will reappear, but this is quite a good solution for the moment ...

cyall Snowlord

P.S. thanks for the support