Hard drive allos install of Mandrake 7 but not boot. Repost from: Assembly/Overcloc

[dathi]

Hello,

I posted this already in Assembly/Overclocking and "mairving" suggested posting it here as well.


I set up my system and installed Linux Mandrake 7. The installation went without a hitch. However when I rebooted the machine it detected the hard disk in the bios as normal then the screen went black with just a blinking cursor in the top corner.

Does anyone have an idea what went wrong? Is it the hard disk or the installation.

The system is one I built my self. It is my first time building a machine.

It is an AMD 500 on a Microstar MS-5187 ATX motherboard.
I have one 9gb Maxtor hard disk.
STB 4400 AGP graphics card.
Creative Sound Blaster card.
Creative DVD drive with MPEG2 card.
96 Mbs of ram.
There are no other operating systems on the computer.

When I first set it up the floppy did not work but I got that fixed. It will boot from a floppy.

Regards
Dathi

[Statica]

Hi Dathi:
Yeah out here we deal with the true OS'

Ok I've got a few thoughts that you could perhaps shed light on, and when answering them you might find what is going wrong as well
In no particular order...

Did you put in a bootloader during Mundrake install? If so where did you install it?

Had you made yourself a bootdisk, does booting of that disk work?

In your BIOS is your CD the first bootdevice? Try bumping up your HDD to your first device.

When you say "installed Mundrake" how did you install it?

[dathi]

Hello Ex-Static-Cling,

I instaled LILO. It wnet where ever it goes by default.

I did make a boot disk. I did not try to boot from it. I will try it tonight once I get home.

The Hard disk is the first boot device.

I installed from a DVD. I used rawwrite to make a copy of the cd install files on a floppy. Then I just followed the standard graphical install. I set it up as a development box with medium security.

Dathi

[Statica]

Hi again Dathi:
Well here's my take on it. Firstly from what I saw Mundrake 7 was one of the most bugged up installations I have ever seen, especially for customized installations. That is not to say that there was an error on your installation, but its best to keep all our options open at this time. A second installation might possibly clear up all that was bugged before [and give U new ones? ]
Ok having made U aware of that.. lets see .. you did use LILO, do you recall having specified the strap to go on the MBR or the first partition, the MBR is the right way to go.

Verifying both of them are easy .. since you used your fd0 to install Linux, you should be able to boot up your Linuxbox [provided it isnt an installation error]. When you do, simply reinstall the bootloader with Lilo [use Linuxconf if you arent familiar with the console].

Out of curiosity, why did you make yourself a boot img disk? & which one did you use? Its a much better way to use the CD to boot, unless of course its a network / PCMCIA installation.

HTH.
Cheers

[mairving]

Yes, it does seem like Mandrake installs well with the standard installation (most of the time). I have found that it is better to setup Mandrake as a basic install and customize it later.

At least you don't have anything to lose on the system yet except for a little bit of time. I would try as Mr. Static says and boot off of the floppy. If that doesn't work, you may try the install again from the CD. I am not sure about the video card. I am assuming that it is supported.

[dathi]

Hello,

Thanks for the ideas Ex-Static-Cling and mairving but it turned out to be something different.

I had the hard disk and floppy drive on the same power cable, when I put a different power cable into the hard disk it booted fine.

Regards
Dathi