[cosor]

Hi, i had some problems installing 10ce on a dual sata hd, but i finally got it to install properly using an ide drive. The problem i am having now is that the boot is on the sata hardrive (the same drive xp is on) and i can't boot into xp.
Although i am not an expert by any means, i believe the lilo settings are correct, but when i choose windows i get a black screen with a flashing underscore.

Does lilo need a file to be written to the sata hd? This drive als uses ntfs, and if a file needs to be on that drive, maybe the install could not write it.

any suggestions would be appreciated, I just got mandrake to work and would hate to have fix the mbr just to get into windows.

boot=/dev/hde1
map=/boot/map
default="linux-enterprise"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
disk=/dev/hde bios=0x80
disk=/dev/hda bios=0x81
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-enterprise
label="linux-enterprise"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd-enterprise.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht splash=silent"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hde1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hde
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

other=/dev/hde1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hde
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

[danleff]

Believe it or not, you should be able to write lilo to the NTFS drive, as it works for me. The issue my be the sata drive.

I wish that I had one to test this out on. Is this a nForce chipset motherboard as well?

Is this your only (production) system? Otherwise we can try a few things.

Lilo looks correct, but this could be a bios issue, as well. See the following thread;

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/162506

If you are up to this, we could try some things that may work. I had a problem with raid and Mandrake 9 like this.

Take note of the last post on the link;

"I had this sort of trouble with lilo recently. You have to tell DOS that it's actually on the first BIOS drive - in lilo this is "map-drive=0x81 to=0x80". Also, if you have DOS compatibility flag or Boot flag on the IDE drive, turn them off with fdisk."

What I wonder about, is the way that the sata drive is set up. Is it set as primary master or cable select? Same question for the ide drive...how is it jumpered?

[cosor]

danleff,
thank you for your replay, to answer some of your questions:
I have no problem trying things as this is my home computer, i would rather not loose my windows stuff, but then it's going through it's slow period so i should reinstall it anyways.

my setup is as follows.
nf7-s(nforce 2), 2500+, 2x512 dual channel
my initial setup was 2x80gb sata drives, but as i had no luck(install freezes) i switched one sata drive to an ide.

ide1: 40gb maxtor(cable select)
ide2: cd-rom
sata1: nothing
sata2: 80gb

setup for sata drives does not use jumpers, there is no primary,... i believe this was one of the benefits of the new format.

i got a little impatient and did a fixmbr. funny thing is that after doing that lilo still came up. i disconected the power to the ide drive and fixmbr the xp(sata) drive againg and then it booted into windows.....strange from the lilo config i was pretty sure the boot drive was the sata drive??

I am going to try the windows bootloader(from one of your links) and then maybe a network install tonight and switch the sata drive from sata 2 to 1.
I am very new to linux and i know i will hit a few walls on the way.

[danleff]

Ah... I think that I get it now. Mandrake only sees the ide drive as the active boot drive, or hde1. Let me think on this one. I bet lilo is on the ide drive. When using raid, for example, Mandrake sees primary or first drive, the ide drive, as hde.

I was going to have you try a little experiment. Go into the bios and change the hd0 to hd1 as the primary boot drive.

[cosor]

ok, after i plugged the ide drive back, lilo did not come up again, now after switching between ide0/1, all i get is invalid operating system. I am going to do a recovery on the linux drive and then maybe attempt to use the windows boot.