problems booting (dual boot winxp and linux debian)

[jhewer]

Hi

Basically here's how my pc was set up:

SATA/SCSI Hard Drive with Windows XP, ntfs
IDE Hardrive, Partition 1 - music / backup ntfs
IDE Hardrive, Partition 2-4 - Linux boot, swap and apps

When i installed Linux i had problems getting the dual boot to work (i'm using LILO btw) to boot windows from the scsi drive, but in the end put some boot files on the IDE Partition 1 which LILO booted (when i wanted to boot windows) which in turn booted Windows from the SATA/SCSI. This worked perfectly.

Recently i reformatted the IDE Hardrive, Partition 1 as Fat32 so that i could use this drive as an inbetween for Windows and Linux (as it was Read Only before when NTFS) I made sure i backup up and copied back over the boot files previously on IDE Hardrive, Partition 1, however it will no longer boot as it used to. It runs LILO fine, i can boot into Linux, but when i try to boot into Windows i get an 'Invalid System Disc' error

Any ideas?

Cheers
Jon

[jhewer]

NB - theres nothing wrong with my Windows drive as i can change the bios to boot straight from there and that works fine. Also the IDE HDD Partition 1 works fine once in Windows/Linux, its just the boot problem, if that makes sense.

Does each partition of a hdd have a boot sector? If so is it possible this was erased when i did the format, and if so would i use the FIXBOOT command on that partition? I dont wanna overwrite the linux LILO boot loader by accident as thats my only way to get into linux....

Cheers

[directhex]

every partition can have a boot sector, plus one master boot record for the disk.

i have to confess, i have little scsi experience, though i wouldn't be surprised if using lilo wasn't helping.

have you considered using debian sarge (testing, soon to be released as 3.1)? it uses grub, which is considerably more powerful (and the installer should set up dual booting automatically).

[jhewer]

i am actually using debian sarge, but had problems originally with grub booting the scsi drive. my m8, who has more experience with linux, changed over to lilo. we originally got that to work, however now i have further problems, as described above.

whats really weird is, now i tried to configure lilo to boot the scsi drive directly, and it now works (it wouldn't before), however introduces about a 1 minute delay between selecting it on the lilo menu and the windows loading screen appearing.....if i can fix this then everything will be fine.

back to the original problem described in my first post - i dont understand why reformatting the IDE HDD Partition 1 to Fat32 shoudl make any different, unless Partition Magic screwed something up. U think it migth be worth reformatting it using something different, for example in Linux?

[jhewer]

right, i ran fixboot on my partition that i recently formatted, and the problem has been solved, it is now bootable.

just wondering tho why if i boot the scsi drive directly from lilo there is such a long pause, when i use the fat32 partition as a go between there is no pause.....seems weird

[directhex]

technically the SCSI spec demands a 30 second drive detection period.

related, perhaps?