Clan x86

General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 12:09:50 am

Title: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 12:09:50 am
My setup is pretty freakin' weird. I have two hard-drives (Serial-ATA) and during BIOS booting, only one of them is recognized. When my main Linux drive is plugged into the primary SATA cable, and my Windows drive the secondary cable, apparently LILO can't see or recognize my Windows drive, because it refuses to boot it. However, if I boot Linux, it mounts my Windows drive like it was nothing.

If I switch their cables, Windows boots like a charm.

Thoughts?
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: MyndFyre on November 27, 2006, 12:31:52 am
Thoughts?
You're defective.  Kill yourself.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 12:34:15 am
Seriously. Fix my damn problem. :(
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Armin on November 27, 2006, 01:07:25 am
My setup is pretty freakin' weird. I have two hard-drives (Serial-ATA) and during BIOS booting, only one of them is recognized. When my main Linux drive is plugged into the primary SATA cable, and my Windows drive the secondary cable, apparently LILO can't see or recognize my Windows drive, because it refuses to boot it. However, if I boot Linux, it mounts my Windows drive like it was nothing.

If I switch their cables, Windows boots like a charm.

Thoughts?
My guess is it's a Vista issue, and that LILO just doesn't recognize it. I'd say to direct the MBR to Vista, and you edit one of your .ini files in Windows (forgot which one), making Vista the bootloader.

EDIT: Maybe even find that .ini file in Vista, see what the command line is for booting Vista, and if possible, manually give that information to LILO. If not, I believe GRUB will let you manually enter than information. I'm just guessing that the command for booting Windows has changed with Vista.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: MyndFyre on November 27, 2006, 03:07:10 am
My setup is pretty freakin' weird. I have two hard-drives (Serial-ATA) and during BIOS booting, only one of them is recognized. When my main Linux drive is plugged into the primary SATA cable, and my Windows drive the secondary cable, apparently LILO can't see or recognize my Windows drive, because it refuses to boot it. However, if I boot Linux, it mounts my Windows drive like it was nothing.

If I switch their cables, Windows boots like a charm.

Thoughts?
My guess is it's a Vista issue, and that LILO just doesn't recognize it. I'd say to direct the MBR to Vista, and you edit one of your .ini files in Windows (forgot which one), making Vista the bootloader.

EDIT: Maybe even find that .ini file in Vista, see what the command line is for booting Vista, and if possible, manually give that information to LILO. If not, I believe GRUB will let you manually enter than information. I'm just guessing that the command for booting Windows has changed with Vista.
Vista's bootloader is completely new (it uses something called BCD for Boot Configuration Database) and you can't just edit boot.ini to get it to load LILO.  However, assuming you can boot LILO from Vista by having it read MBR for the LILO partition, you could try Googling VistaBootPro and adding your LILO drive entry into the BCD database.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Armin on November 27, 2006, 08:38:10 am
Err, I wasn't saying to make Vista boot LILO, yet Vista to boot Linux.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 09:50:31 am
VistaBootPro doesn't have support for adding non-Windows drives (BAH!) to its database. :|
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: rabbit on November 27, 2006, 06:09:51 pm
http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/273
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 06:38:03 pm
It only supports GRUB.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Warrior on November 27, 2006, 07:49:38 pm
Use GRUB then, it's better anyway.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 07:53:09 pm
Use GRUB then, it's better anyway.

Nah. LILO is established. GRUB is new and bleh.

I fixed the problem. I told my BIOS to detect, and it worked. Who'da thunk it? :)
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Chavo on November 27, 2006, 08:08:07 pm
Nah. LILO is established. GRUB is new and bleh.
"new"

 ::)
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 08:16:11 pm
I know. New things suck. :(
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Sidoh on November 27, 2006, 11:18:02 pm
I know. New things suck. :(

Yet you use the 2.6 kernel?
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 27, 2006, 11:59:06 pm
I know. New things suck. :(

Yet you use the 2.6 kernel?

Quote
newby@impaler:~$ uname -a
Linux impaler 2.4.31 #21 Sun Jun 5 19:19:51 PDT 2005 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

Eh?
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Sidoh on November 28, 2006, 12:13:09 am
For some reason, I thought you used 2.6 on one of your computers.  I think your statement was much too broad to hold any sort of validity.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Newby on November 28, 2006, 12:19:00 am
It was supposed to have someone attack me for using Vista. :P

I know overkill does (gentoo defaults to the 2.6 kernel) so eh?
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: nslay on November 28, 2006, 07:44:37 pm
My setup is pretty freakin' weird. I have two hard-drives (Serial-ATA) and during BIOS booting, only one of them is recognized. When my main Linux drive is plugged into the primary SATA cable, and my Windows drive the secondary cable, apparently LILO can't see or recognize my Windows drive, because it refuses to boot it. However, if I boot Linux, it mounts my Windows drive like it was nothing.

If I switch their cables, Windows boots like a charm.

Thoughts?

I wrote a post about this on another forum some time ago ... except, it was with FreeBSD's bootloader and multiple harddrives.
You might notice if you install Windows and use the entire drive (or the remainder of the drive) that it leaves oh say 12 or so MB unpartitioned.  I am fairly certain this is Window's bootloader since, if you write over it, or it goes missing, Windows no longer boots.  To further corroborate this hypothesis, I have a Windows XP image from long ago.  I've dd'd it to the drive before and it has worked.  Now, I've also clobbered the entire drive and installed FreeBSD and then later decided to repartition the drive and it no longer worked thereafter.
My guess is that your harddrive is missing this (and probably, more specifically, your first harddrive is missing it).
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: Armin on November 28, 2006, 08:04:25 pm
My setup is pretty freakin' weird. I have two hard-drives (Serial-ATA) and during BIOS booting, only one of them is recognized. When my main Linux drive is plugged into the primary SATA cable, and my Windows drive the secondary cable, apparently LILO can't see or recognize my Windows drive, because it refuses to boot it. However, if I boot Linux, it mounts my Windows drive like it was nothing.

If I switch their cables, Windows boots like a charm.

Thoughts?

I wrote a post about this on another forum some time ago ... except, it was with FreeBSD's bootloader and multiple harddrives.
You might notice if you install Windows and use the entire drive (or the remainder of the drive) that it leaves oh say 12 or so MB unpartitioned.  I am fairly certain this is Window's bootloader since, if you write over it, or it goes missing, Windows no longer boots.  To further corroborate this hypothesis, I have a Windows XP image from long ago.  I've dd'd it to the drive before and it has worked.  Now, I've also clobbered the entire drive and installed FreeBSD and then later decided to repartition the drive and it no longer worked thereafter.
My guess is that your harddrive is missing this (and probably, more specifically, your first harddrive is missing it).

IIRC, that extra 8* MB is in case you wanted to do some kind of change to the partition. I can't really remember exactly what it was, though.
Title: Re: Interesting BIOS Configuration...
Post by: nslay on November 28, 2006, 08:07:16 pm
My setup is pretty freakin' weird. I have two hard-drives (Serial-ATA) and during BIOS booting, only one of them is recognized. When my main Linux drive is plugged into the primary SATA cable, and my Windows drive the secondary cable, apparently LILO can't see or recognize my Windows drive, because it refuses to boot it. However, if I boot Linux, it mounts my Windows drive like it was nothing.

If I switch their cables, Windows boots like a charm.

Thoughts?

I wrote a post about this on another forum some time ago ... except, it was with FreeBSD's bootloader and multiple harddrives.
You might notice if you install Windows and use the entire drive (or the remainder of the drive) that it leaves oh say 12 or so MB unpartitioned.  I am fairly certain this is Window's bootloader since, if you write over it, or it goes missing, Windows no longer boots.  To further corroborate this hypothesis, I have a Windows XP image from long ago.  I've dd'd it to the drive before and it has worked.  Now, I've also clobbered the entire drive and installed FreeBSD and then later decided to repartition the drive and it no longer worked thereafter.
My guess is that your harddrive is missing this (and probably, more specifically, your first harddrive is missing it).

IIRC, that extra 8* MB is in case you wanted to do some kind of change to the partition. I can't really remember exactly what it was, though.
Whatever it is, it seems to affect booting.  Newby, what you could also try is having the BIOS boot the specific harddrive Windows is installed on.
EDIT: Lilo, grub, FreeBSD bootloader, and so forth don't get along with multiple harddrives too often.  For example, you have to install the FreeBSD bootloader on the first harddrive, and a FreeBSD bootloader/standard bootloader on that actual drive FreeBSD is installed on.  Not sure what these bootloaders do if Windows is on any drive other than the first (I'm not even sure they'll get that right either!).