10.1 / WinXP won't boot yet its on separate HDD

[Guest Doctoxic]

Hi all - wonder if you can help

 

I had a win XP PC with 2 HDD set as master and slave

I disconnected the ide cable from the mobo

Then connected a 40gig hard drive to the mobo

During the Mandrale 10.1 install (which went fine) it only 'saw' the 40 gig drive

(In a previous life the 40gig HD had had WinXP on it)

So when it said as part of the Mandrake install delete windows i went for this option

 

I have now unplugged my Mandrake HD from the mobo and re-plugged in my WinXP IDE cable

 

BUT

 

I get the screen where it gives you options to load safe mode or last known good configeration etc and its starts to count down

 

if i let it count down it just freezes

on the last good version option the screen goes blank

on the safe mode option it seems to load a few sys files and then freezes

on the other options it just freezes

 

 

any idea's whats gong on and how to fix it?

 

many thanks

 

Doc

[Cannonfodder]

Well, first of all, did you replace the MBR during the mandrake install? If so, you have to reinstall the windows MBR. If so, try hooking the linux drive back up and do a UNINSTALL of the lilo.

 

lilo -U

 

Should restore your previous MBR which is the windows MBR. THen swap them again and see if windows will startup.

 

If you get there, then hook the linux drive up with the windows and run the Mandrake installer again. But this time do it over your mandrake partitions. Alternatively, you can skip installation and try to setup your /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf files to point to the drives current address (HDA or HDB or HDC whatever).

[Guest Doctoxic]

thanks for the quick reply cannonfodder

 

i'm afraid my pc knowledge is very limited - is the MBR on the harddrive? (or on the motherboard?)

 

i assume its on the hard drive - but as i disconnected the winXP hard drive from the mobo before i installed Mandrake i don't understand why there is a MBR problem

 

Doc

[Guest Doctoxic]

hmmm

i think there are other probs here

 

i can boot from DOS ok

BUT - my Live Unbuntu CD hands just after the first screen

as does my Mandrake if i plug that back in

However i did get this message on one of the Mandrake boot options

"Spurious 8259a Interupt IRQ7"

 

does this mean i have some sort of hardware problem?

any idea how i track it down?

 

many thanks

 

Doc