Old PC won't boot...

[StrangelyBrown]

I gave my old (modified) Gateway PC to my Dad around 6 months ago - specs are as follows:-

PIII 450
(can't remember MOBO manufacturer - It has Phoenix BIOS though)
196 MB RAM
Onboard Soundblaster 64D PCI
Geforce 2 MX
Primary IDE Master 8.4 GB HD (win2k/office programs)
Primary IDE Slave 512 MB HD (used for win2k swap)
Secondary IDE Master 20GB HD (other programs/mp3s/games)
Secondary IDE Slave CD/DVD ROM

Now when you switch it on, detects everything correctly and attempts to boot. Only you get a blank screen with a flashing cursor in the top left of the screen and it doesn't boot into win2K. I have no Win2K rescue disks...

Did all the obvious things such as check the IDE cables and connections by plugging the 8.4GB and 20GB into my PC (Abit KR7A RAID mobo, put them on primary IDE - I boot from RAIDed disks). They seemed to work fine and I backed up all the important data from them without any problems.

Fine I thought, he's just got a virus that's screwed up the MBR.

So I decided to make things a lot simpler, pull out all the disks bar the 20GB one (making it primary master and making the CD/DVD ROM primary slave). I sacrifice the data on the drive, and install Mandrake Linux 8.1 on it (creating a rescue disk), using LILO as the bootloader. After installation was completed, I re-booted. Exactly the same... It didn't boot.

I managed to get it booted using the rescue floppy disk (root=/dev/hda1 switch) and re-checked my /etc/lilo.conf file - All looked OK so I re-ran LILO to re-install the bootloader and re-booted. Same problem.

Re-booted from floppy again, re-ran LILO telling it to update the MBR and re-booted. Same problem.

Anyone got any ideas because I'm now stumped... And I don't fancy letting it boot from floppy forever...

Regs,
Strangely Brown

 

[Testin da Cable]

silly question but did you flag the disk as bootable when installing linux?

 

[Mellow-]

How can you not have a Win2k boot disk :touch:

 

[Will]

He means he didn't have a rescue disc. You can make up a 4 disc boot floppy set, as I've had to do recently, and I'm glad I did after an "overwrite MBR" incident.

If anyone knows an easy way to clean up the windows style dual boot screen to remove non-existant installations, that would rock.

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Will.
If anyone knows an easy way to clean up the windows style dual boot screen to remove non-existant installations, that would rock.

Edit the msdos.sys

 

[Will]

Any other offers? That file doesn't exist under Win2k I'm afraid.

 

[(Shovel)]

Edit boot.ini.

 

[Will]

I have Blade.ini, Blob.ini, Bomb.ini, and Box.ini, but no boot.ini

This is confusing.

 

[(Shovel)]

It'll be hidden - or protected.

Just type in the full path (C:\boot.ini) in Notepad-->"Open" and it should find it.

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Will.
Any other offers? That file doesn't exist under Win2k I'm afraid.

Well it should be there!

 

[Will]

Shovel = winner.

 

[Mellow-]

I made the assumption you'd already unhidden your files. :doh:

 

[StrangelyBrown]

Well I fixed it...

Something really weird buggered it up to prevent the old thing from booting - Looks like some of the CMOS data became corrupted.

For some reason, the boot order of the disk drives read:-

HD1
HD1
HD2

instead of

HD1
HD2
Removable Drive

Just did a "reset to default settings" in the BIOS and hey presto it worked.

Regs,
Strangely

 

[Mellow-]

A blinking cursor at the top left usually indicates a missing hardware device, so that makes sense. It appears everyone wanted to help Will first though!

 

[danger]

Yeah dude you've gotta edit boot.in................................... sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! too late