Re: can't get Windows to boot on secondary disk

[Andrej Mikus]

Team,

I made some investigations today regarding the issue, how does BIOS
setting affect the Windows boot, but unfortunately, could not find an
explanation.

I moved the Windows disk to slave on secondary channel, and with BIOS
setting of this drive primary, Windows 98 boots without issue, and the
primary partition on this disk is seen from Windows as C:

Without any hardware/BIOS change I booted linux from floppy in single
user mode, and confirmed that the same drive is detected as /dev/hdd.
In Windows I checked system properties and it shows drive C: assigned
to disk on controller at address 170 (secondary).

So my previous thoughts about BIOS changing controllers I/O is confirmed
incorrect and I feel there must be a software way of doing it.
Is is possible to achieve similar functionality with grub?
Or is it already to late for is after grub is already run from MBR of first
disk?
Perhaps a bug in the map command?
Eventually, could grup chainload MBR of the other disk instead of
jumping directly to configured partition?

Any comments appreciated.

Andrej



On Sun, 04.May.03 00:18:15 +0200, Andrej Mikus wrote:
> In-Reply-To=15211.18834.607324.241398%40eden-hda7.my.local
> Reply-To: 
> 
> Dear grub community,
> 
> I found a message at
> http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grub/2001-08/msg00026.html and it
> is the applicable to my problem as outlined in the ssubject.
> 
> I bought a new drive and I am setting it up with RedHat Linux. I did not
> want to make any changes to the original disk, so I moved it to
> secondary. Installed grub on the new drive, but cannot get it working to
> boot Windows on secondary. With the map command it starts, but as
> mentioned in grub documentation:
> 
> > Caution: This is effective only if DOS (or Windows) uses BIOS to access
> > the swapped disks. If that OS uses a special driver for the disks, this
> > probably won't work. 
> 
> Because the system hangs when Windows goes to 32-bin mode, this is
> indeed the problem. But the reason I am looking for help in this list is
> the fact that I am able to boot succesfully from the secondary disk with
> a configuration change in BIOS setup. I use Intel SE440BX-2 mainboard
> with Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0, Version 4S4EB2X0.86A.0009.P03 and it
> contains setting for Hard drive boot order. If I put here the secondary
> disk to a primary position, Windows boots without any problem.
> 
> I am wondering what kind of change does this BIOS setting do, and if
> similar could be possible with grub. CMOS update and reboot is not very
> convenient. I am considering swapping the drives and installing grub on
> the Windows one, but seeing that BIOS can do it, I would like to
> understand where is the actual problem. Is it possible that it swaps the
> controller I/O ports or something othe hardware related?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any applicable comments.
> 
> Andrej
>