[NBLUG/talk] Can't boot from Hard Drive

E Frank Ball III frankb at frankb.us
Wed Oct 24 14:25:56 PDT 2007


The only places drives would be listed would be /etc/fstab, and either
/etc/lilo.conf or (more likely) /boot/grub/menu.1st (or it may be
/boot/grub/grub.conf What distribution is this?).  There may be some
/dev/hdc references that need to be changed to /dev/hda

He can boot from a live CD (knoppix or similar) and edit these if it
won't boot.

FrankB


On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 01:43:48PM -0700, Scrappy Laptop wrote:
 > Since you can now boot from the HDD (even if the OS boot process fails, it does start, right?) and the CD drive is (assumed) usable, worse case scenario you can use the Dell F12 boot menu to boot from the CD and reinstall to the HDD after reformatting, etc.  
 > 
 > With enough mucking around it should be possible to clear out any bad drive id entries, but it it worth the trouble or can you quickly reinstall?
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > Dave Sisley <dsisley at sonic.net> wrote: Eric, et al:
 > 
 > I've disconnected the CD drive from the cable (and therefore the 
 > motherboard).  I've moved that cable to the primary IDE slot.  The drive 
 > is set jumper-wise to 'single or master'.  It didn't boot, so I went 
 > into the bios and the drive is in fact listed as the Primary Master.  I 
 > finally can see the hard drive as an option in choosing boot-device 
 > order.  It now tries to boot from the hard drive.  Hooray!
 > 
 > The hard drive seems to be completely bollocksed (sp?) however.  Boo!
 > 
 > If I try and boot to single user mode, I get a message re: filesystem 
 > check failure.  So I run fsck -y /dev/mapper/VolGroupWhatever (I copied 
 > it from df).
 > 
 > It says 'clean'. I boot.  Screen goes blank shortly after the GUI part 
 > of the boot process starts (this is FC4).  I managed to 'show details' 
 > during this part and saw very briefly an error message referring to 
 > /dev/hdc1.  Could that be the phantom CD drive?  I also quickly see the 
 > word 'superblock'.
 > 
 > 
 > they think it's still there?  Is this computer haunted?  Am I ever going 
 > to get any work done? >
 > 
 > I've just tried reconnecting the CD drive with another cable, to the 
 > secondary IDE slot.
 > 
 > Machine still no boot.  Hulk angry!  Drive all the way to Best Buy. GRRR!
 > 
 > Eric Landerville wrote:
 > > Dave,
 > > By saying the following,
 > >
 > > *SNIP*
 > > The drive is listed as the secondary master.
 > > *SNIP*
 > >
 > > I would say that you have the IDE ribbon cables plugged into the, not 
 > > wrong, but oppisite slots on the mother board. 
 > > Normal motherboards can only handle 4 IDE drives and there are two buses 
 > > for those drives, the primary and the secondary.  I would say that you 
 > > have your hard drive plugged into the secondary connector on the 
 > > motherboard.  Switch the CD and hard drive cables on the mother board 
 > > and see what happens. 
 > >
 > > Good luck,
 > >
 > > Eric
 > >
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-- 

   E Frank Ball                frankb at frankb.us



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