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Interesting... I reinstalled Slackware tonight and my HP boot screen disappeared again.
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Quote:
When it does work, what do you see on the screen? Do you see an HP logo first, followed by a text display of start-up messages? HP is infamous for providing stripped down or bug-riddled BIOS firmware. My HP laptop has no provision to disable CD/DVD booting, for example: a big security hole. Some of the newer HP UEFI firmware has other limitations and quirks when booting non-Windows operating systems. It's possible that your computer boots some HP software through the Master Boot Record before it boots the OS. In that case, installing LILO to the Master Boot Record will prevent the HP software from running. If you restore the Master Boot Record and set the boot flag for the correct partition then the HP software will start up again. You can install LILO to the Slackware partition's boot sector instead of the Master Boot Record. For example use "boot=sda2" instead of "boot=sda" in the "lilo.conf" file. To do that, the Slackware partition must be a Primary partition. You will then need to set the "boot" flag for the Slackware partition to start LILO first, or chain to LILO from some other boot loader. For example, the Windows 7 or Windows XP boot-loader can chain to LILO. You can use programs such as "MbrFix" to restore the default MBR software. The default MBR software looks for the first Primary partition with the "boot" flag set and then chains to the boot sector of that partition. Windows installs its boot loader to the Windows partition rather than the MBR. |
Thanks Erik for the detailed reply.
I was able to restore the boot screen again simply by running the HP diagnostics cd as in post #15. I didn't even run any tests this time, somehow just allowing the diagnostics utility to load (which creates a temporary windows partition on the hard drive) restores the boot screen. I believe you are correct that writing LiLo to the MBR has something to do with it, but at any rate I didn't have to move it out of there to get things working again. Jim |
Actually Lost BIOS
I did a fresh install of Slackware 14.1 64-bit and lost my BIOS. Literally. I run a hp Pavilion dv8000 with dual 100GB Hard Drives, 3GB of RAM, on an AMD 64 Processor. The install went great after a minute or so in KDE it froze up and crashed. Now it powers on but the hard drive light stays on and the DVD drive loops. No access what so ever. I've tried hard resetting it, no luck. Same with resetting the BIOS and now I'm at a loss. Any ideas?
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tech6130, please post your question as a separate new topic. Otherwise most people will not see it.
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