Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Problem with Non booting extra OS s.

0 helpful
3 replies

by c.snell

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I have a problem you may , hopefully,be able to help me with. I have two hard drives one with 40 gigabytes of storage and the second 120. I have partitioned both drives and put windows XP on the first drive in a partition alongside the original Windows 98 partition. On the second drive I have put Linux. Both new partitions are outside the eight gigabyte boundary. However, my BIOS is fully updated and LBA compliant, as are the hard drives.
Neither of the two new operating systems are bootable without using an emergency start-up disk for that system. The second hard drive was configured as a slave with the jumper. On entering the Award BIOS standard CMOS page, the "primary slave" entry states "none". I am assuming , possibly incorrectly, that this should hold data about my new hard drive and that this is part of a problem, but cannot see a way to enter any data about the hard drive manually. On the other hand, I must say that the other partitions on the second drive (the one which is not detected), which contain programmes and data, work very well. I'm using either Boot Magic or the Linux boot manager to attempt to boot to the other operating systems (without any success!). Any ideas would be gratefully received.

3 replies

by dmiles

You could try using the Auto setting to see if the drive will be detected

Secondly you can enter the drive parameters by using the arrow keys using the down arrow to drive then right arrow key to each section to enter data first you get the drive parameters from the back of the hard drive

Check the drive jumpers on first drive to make sure that jumpers are set to master,using a startup disk check drive partition to make sure that you have the primary partition set to active.

The CMOS setup should also give an option in the right-pane to auto detect the drive

by c.snell

Poster rated this answer.
Thanks D. Miles for response.
"AUTO" setting didn't help. I had tried the arrow keys but most parameters that could be changed were unselectable. Discovered since that setting to "normal" allowed selection & editing. However my problems persist. The jumper settings are correct, I've double checked. I'm attemting boot up with BootMagic (correctly configured)which is supposed to set selected OS patition to active!!
Once more, sincere thanks for input.
Chas.

by william jay

Howdy,

Firstly, fix the hardware problem: the drive is not recognized. Some hard drives require two jumpers to be set: one to designate Master, and another when there's a Slave Present . . .

Using Partition Magic, (and BootMagic), is very often problematical when there are several Operating Systems. I have found by experience that lilo is simply the best boot manager overall. For best results, create partition(s) for each OS using the particular fdisk that comes with each OS.

At any rate, fix the hardware first and the software after. With software, there are often three or more ways to do things, while for hardware, usually only the one right way . . .

Is XP on a logical drive in an extended partition or on a primary partition? IS XP using NTFS or some other file system? Was lilo installed on hd1 or hd2?

Please provide some feedback as this progresses towards your success.

William

This discussion is closed to new replies.