Dual Boot - Dual HDD's
 

I need help with dual booting XP Pro (hda) and Mandriva LE2005 (hdb).

Mandriva wrote the loader to hda and upon reboot it just displayed 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 ... etc. I restored the XP boot loader to use the box again. Can someone please direct me to another post which lists the steps to dual boot with 2 hard drives or can you please explain what i must do. I know how to dual boot with multiple partitions on a single drive but i dont know how to do it this way. Please help.

Respectfully yours,
Joseph

pc4christ@praize.com

The error you're getting is from lilo not installing correctly. Repair lilo by using your install disk, at the first prompt press F1, and follow the instructions.
That should get you back into linux, if not fix it completely.

If windows doesn't work at this point, resetup lilo with whatever toolo you want
If you choose to edit lilo.conf you might want to set boot = dev/hdb/. Then run lilo (to write the changes)

But will this work with 2 seperate hard drives with each OS on its own drive? I will fix lilo in a little bit and will post the results. its just the winXP is the wifes and Mandriva is mine. she does not want me using her drive.

Thanks

I boot two OS on two separate hard drives, SimplyMepis 2004 on hda, and SimplyMepis 3.3 on hdb. I use grub instead of lilo, but it works fine. I don't know why you couldn't do something similar in lilo. In /boot/grub/menu.lst is a file which lists the available operating systems and their locations:

default saved
timeout 15
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 2f5178
splashimage /boot/grub/mepis.xpm.gz

title MEPIS at hda1, kernel 2.6.7
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.7 root=/dev/hda1 nomce psmouse.proto=imps quiet splash=verbose vga=791
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.mepis
savedefault

title MEPIS at hda1, kernel 2.4.26
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.26 root=/dev/hda1 nomce quiet splash=verbose vga=791 hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.mepis
savedefault

title MEPIS at hdb1, kernel 2.6.10
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10 root=/dev/hdb1 nomce psmouse.proto=imps quiet splash=verbose vga=791
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.splash

title MEPIS at hdb1, kernel 2.4.29
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.29 root=/dev/hdb1 nomce quiet splash=verbose vga=791 hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.splash

title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86.bin

hope this helps

Yes, it'll work with win on 1 hdd, and linux on the other; that's what I did for about 3 months, before I realised I spend most of my time in linux, and when I was in windows, I spent nearly 1/2 of my time "fixing" it (ie: defrag, spyware, windows updates, anti-virus,etc) before I could do anything. So, byebye windows!

Plus linux is funner, way less maintanance, more free software (the window's idea of free is spyware), more services/daemons to play with (cacheing name server, http, etc) to use and learn from.

The only thing I miss about windows is the 3rd party hardware support, but that's only because of my poor pre-linux choices.

This might help:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=320449


of course it may not, there were a few things in it I thought might help.

I reinstalled Lilo and that fixed the boot problem that i first had (it was giving 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 .... upon boot up after post). I am comfortable with editing the config file for lilo but what do i add to the file in order to boot win xp? does anyone have this setup and if so could you please post it? as for the above link it involves using one drive divided into 3 partitions.

Or how can I install GRUB?

my dual boot
 

Actually, my 98 partitions are on a completely different HD. XP pro and Mandriva share a HD.
Before I installed xp and mandriva, I had RH linux running with FreeBSD. In order to boot to
the second HD ( with linux on it) I had to change the boot order in BIOS. Now, I don't.

1st HD= dual XP pro and Mandriva--I've got 2 fat32 partitions for xp and then rest mandriva got.
2nd HD = win98 ONLY and yes, there are 3 partitions.

ALL the operating systems on my machine boot from the Mandriva boot loader screen.

If I didn't state this clearly in my post (thought I had) , sorry for the confusion.

Again thanks for the help so far but here is what i have done so far:

1. reinstalled Lilo using the CD and typing rescue. I am now getting the same "01 01 01 01...etc" at boot time.

2. used same CD1 and reinstalled XP boot loader to get online.

3. Went to work and used an older unit with 2 hdd. installed windows xp pro on hda and it boots at work. i then installed mandriva on hdb with lilo on hda. rebooted and all works well except for my sound blaster audigy2 value. so i went back home and tried it again but i still get 01 01 01 01 01 01. I even deleted the partitions on hdb and installed Collegelinux to see if it would do different but when the bios goes to boot from hda it sees lilo and displays, L 01 01 01 01 01...
so i wiped hdb again and installed Mandriva LE2005 with the same results. its a new drive (hda).

I can not figure what gives. the same setup (2 hard drives) works on my old pc at work (ibm pl300 tower) but not at home. my home pc is a custom built rig. please please help.

where can i get a boot floppy or can i use the rescue command to boot the hdb drive?

Thanks
Joseph

thank to all for the help. I failed to notice the most basic item. the bios... the hdd was not installed in the bios. sorry and thank for all the advise.