GRUB stalls
 

I just added a Slackware distro as additional partitions to WinME. Then installed GRUB, seemingly without problem. GRUB loads normally at boot, and shows both distros, and boots the Slack distro fine. If I try to boot WinME from GRUB though, it takes me right back to the GRUB GUI. No error is reported.

Also, if I boot the system from a GRUB floppy, and use the GRUB command line to try to boot WinME, I also end up at the apparently normal GRUB GUI. ???

Here is menu.lst:

timeout 60
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
shade 1
viewport 3 2 77 22
default 0

title Slack Linux
kernel (hd0,4)/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 ro splash=silent

title Windows ME
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive

The WinME partition is /dev/hda1, the Slack /boot is on hda5, and Slack root on hda7.

I'm wondering if somehow GRUB replaced the WinME boot sector, so that GRUB is trying to boot "itself" on hda1. I tried running "FDISK /MBR" on a Win98 boot disk, but it made no change.

I'd appreciate any input.

Thanks.

Try reordering

Hi. I have tried changing the order of commands in menu.lst, but it didn't make any difference.

I have 3 other systems dual or triple booted with various linux and Windows distros, all using GRUB and working fine, and I have tried all their menu.lst configurations for Windows,on this new install, but I still get the same problem.

Hmmm. Did you try root (hd0,0) instead of rootnoverify? small change, I know. Also, just to check, what is fdisk -l yield? I once had a machine where there was a small recovery partition sitting at the front of the disk...

Here is fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/hda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1275 10241406 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 1276 4160 23173762+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 * 1276 1310 281106 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 1311 1411 811251 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 1412 2430 8185086 83 Linux
/dev/hda8 2431 3646 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda9 3647 3902 2056288+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda10 3903 4160 2072353+ 83 Linux

There are no other HDs in the system.

Now, suddenly, I'm getting an error message. After trying to boot WinME, I get a message saying Stage 2 is loading, then I get an Error 18 message. From the GRUB info site, this is as follows:

"18 : Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general)."

I don't understand this, because this system (same MoBo and HD) used to be dual-booted with the same WinME and with Mandrake, and GRUB had no problem then.

Not sure where to go from here...

Hmmm. Color me confused... It looks like it should be working. It's odd that fdisk /mbr didn't do anything though. It should have restored ME's bootloader...

The other strange thing about trying to restore the Windows bootloader was that while booting from a DOS disc, I could not access the C: directory. I rec'd a message saying "Invalid media," as though DOS could not see the hard drive. So even though it appeared to execute the command "fdisk /mbr" it is possible that nothing was actually done to the hard drive. Why this should be, I have no idea.

Also no clue why the Error 18 from GRUB now.

It almost seems like something got confused on the partition table. Sorry, I don't have any idea now how to help... :confused: