Well, that didn't work as planned...

[Xayd]

I have no doubt that this is a Windows issue, but figured someone in this forum would more likely have experience with this one.

Got a second hard drive for Linux/FreeBSD, an old Seagate 4 gig from a crappo Acer box I had in various pieces here. The drive works fine, and the install of Red Hat 6.1 worked as usual, but suddenly Windows takes forever to boot, and locks shortly after I get in. At the point Windows slows down and halts, I can hear activity on the Linux drive. Lilo works properly. I formatted the Seagate drive as Fat32 before installing Linux to make sure it worked ok, and it did under Windows then. No obvious problems at that point.

So, anyone seen this and possibly fixed it before? I've always used partitions in the past, this is my first run with a dedicated drive for the other OS. Currently the Windows drive with two partitions is Primary master, Kenwood CD-ROM is slaved to the Windows drive, and the Linux drive is secondary master.

Xayd

[Toaster]

This suggests that the Linux file structure is partially understood by Micky$oft. How is the drive set-up?
I would suggest the native file structure for Linux if it isn`t already because Micky$oft will ignore it.
One word of warning, Norton and sometimes Micky$oft will ask if you want the "Linux" drive repaired because it thinks the drive/file structure is in error. Do not allow either access to the drive.

[Statica]

Win is trying to search for the drive that it had previously added, unlike most other hardware a missing drive is kinda fatal to Win. I'd suggest cleaning out one OS depending on what OS has data that u need the most.
If u wipe out Windoze and put it afresh be aware that you will lose your bootloader.
If you wipe your Linux what you could do is make a perfunctory vfat partition on your Linux drive just so Win thinx that there is a drive.

Win shows us the woes of a smart-alecky OS that thinks it knows everything and wont let the user decide what s/he wants.

[Xayd]

Good idea Ex. I'll give Linux a 10 meg or so vfat partition if I have a need for this again. Turns out that this is all moot since I've got a Duron, though, since apparently the cache timings on the CPU cause the ever popular "kernel panic" during the boot process and it won't start for the first time. I'm assuming this issue with Athlon processors is being addressed with the 2.4 kernel, or is there a fix already?

Also, on the drive thing, what say I removed the drive from Windows, then reboot to a floppy and install Linux immediately without ever letting Windows see a vfat partition on it at all. Would it still find it as hardware or would it miss it due to the foreign FAT?


Xayd

[Statica]

Hi XayD:
Yes the issue is addressed in 2.4 kernels .. I think I've seen a patch somewhere will post if i can search it out of my bookmarks.

I've noticed the error u mentioned with Win .. the thing abt M$ s/w is that even the bugs are buggy .. for example, for Linux, I know what the bugs are and the bugs will manifest themselves as regular bugs do .. but you cant say the same abt M$. A lot of the probs stem from the structure [ha ha] of fat32.

[Statica]

http://www.athlonlinux.org/

that was the URL