Wary HD install won't boot

[mdiemer]

So here it is, the Menu List from PL 412.


Menu List, Puppy Linux 4.1.2 July 17, 2018

# Grub configuration file ‘/boot/grub/menu.lst’.
# generated by ‘grubconfig’. Tue Jul 17 00:34:31 2018
#
# Start GRUB global section
# timeout 30
color light-gray/blue black/light-gray
# End GRUB global section
# Other bootable partition begins
title Windows (on /devsda1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# Other bootable partition ends
# Other bootable partition begins
title Windows (on /devsdb1) [Note: this is probably a backup or image of Win]
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader + 1
# Other bootable partition config ends
#Linux bootable partition config begins
title Linux (on /dev/sdb2)
root (hd0,1) [Note: this is the only change I made]
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb2 ro vga=normal
#Linux bootable partition ends
title Install GRUB to floppy disk (on /dev/fd0)
pause Insert a formatted floppy disk and press enter.
root (hd1,1)
setup (fd0)
pause Press enter to continue.
Title Install GRUB to Linux partition (on dev/sdb2)
root (hd1,1)
setup (hd1,1)
pause Press enter to continue.
Title – For help press ‘c’ then type: ‘help’
root (hd0)
title – For usage examples, type ‘cat boot/grub/usage.txt’
root (hd0)


As you can see, I made two notes. The first is for the second Windows entry, on sdb1. This may be a backup, image or bad install of Windows; I don't remember. But it boots into a ghostly image of Windows. Weird.

The second note is for the only change I have made to the list, from (hd1,1) to (hd0,1). This is what has allowed puppy to boot from sdb2.

Hopefully this will help make things clearer. The primary issue now is to be able to boot Windows from sdb2 grub menu.

[bigpup]

This could get Grub4dos working the way it should work.
Use the latest version.
V1.9.2
Download it from here:
Grub4dos config
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=51697

Grub4dos-0.4.4.v1.9.2.pet
http://shino.pos.to/linux/puppy/grub4do ... v1.9.2.pet

Download and install when running Puppy 412.

When Running Grub4dos config V1.9.2
Select to Install to sdb
Only choice needed to make.
All other options are good as they are by default.
Keep selecting OK until program ends.
Do not edit the menu.
Reboot computer by selecting in bios to boot from device sdb.

[mostly_lurking]

I installed Windows 98 on a fat16 partition, which got its bootloader working (but made the system even more crash-happy than before and caused problems with the third-party graphics driver I was using; had to switch back to the awful built-in 16-color driver...). Anyway, I could do some more testing with different setups on a virtual machine.
Virtualbox does not allow me to set the boot order of multiple hard drives, but its BIOS has a boot menu accessible by pressing "F12" during boot. (Does your computer have such a boot menu, too? In that case, you could leave the Windows disk as default boot and pick the Linux disk from the menu when you want to use it, if you can't get Windows to boot with either Grub or Grub4Dos.)

For me, the following two configurations were working out of the box.
(I re-ran the Grub config program from a Puppy 4 CD after every change of drive configuration.)

- hd0/sda (IDE, master) with Windows (on sda1, first Windows entry in the Grub menu works)
- hd1/sdb (IDE, slave) with Puppy (on sdb2)
--> default boot is hd0 (Windows boot); select hd1 (Grub) from BIOS boot menu

- hd0/sda (IDE, master) with Puppy (on sda2)
- hd1/sdb (IDE, slave) with Windows (on sdb1, second Windows entry works)
--> default boot is hd0 (Grub)

Neither of the above created the situation you have, where Grub sees the drives in a different order than Puppy does, but the following do:

- hd0, IDE, Windows > default
- hd1, SATA, Puppy > via BIOS boot menu; first Windows entry works
--> had to change Linux menu entry from 'hd0,1' to 'hd1,1'
--> Puppy sees its own drive as sda and the Windows drive as sdb

- hd0, IDE, Puppy > default
- hd1, SATA, Windows > via BIOS boot menu
--> had to change Linux menu entry from 'hd1,1' to 'hd0,1'
--> Windows 98 tries booting from second Grub menu entry, but fails (can't access boot disk, apparently; it might have a problem with the drive order - it boots from the SATA drive when the IDE drive is removed)
--> Puppy sees its own drive as sdb and the Windows drive as sda

This last configuration was the one that most resembled yours - Windows drive as sda, Linux drive as sdb, Grub had them switched around, and it produced a menu.lst file very similar to yours. There seems to be a "rootnoverify..." line missing from your second Windows entry, or maybe you merely overlooked it when writing the text down:

Code: Select all

title Windows (on /dev/sdb1)
  map (hd0) (hd1)
  map (hd1) (hd0)
  rootnoverify (hd1,0)
  makeactive
  chainloader +1

Despite the similarities, this is not identical to your situation - I was using one IDE and one SATA drive there.

With this setup, I installed the Grub4Dos .pet that bigpup posted above on the Puppy 4 system (I had to restart the JWM window manager afterwards to make the Grub4Dos bootloader configuration program show up in Puppy's 'System' menu; go to Menu > Shutdown > Restart JWM). Running the Grub4Dos config, I selected 'sdb'- the Linux drive - to install it to and left all options at default without editing anything. Then I rebooted, and both the Puppy and Windows entries in the new boot menu were working.

[mdiemer]

Thank you Bigpup and Lurker, I will work on these suggestions later today. One problem with updating grub: the computer is offline, internet access not even possible at this time. So I will attempt to download updated grub on other computer and install it via CD. This will all take awhile, other priorities to deal with while the sun shines.

[mdiemer]

Bigpup, it worked! I really like that version of grub4dos, very elegant. Wow, wait until I show the wife. Maybe she will even allow this computer to go online! with a very short lease, of course.

Thanks also to mostly_lurking, Perdido, Mike Walsh, mike sir (aka the catman), and also the others who chimed in. I have learned a lot, and in the process have grown to really love Puppy Linux. I am seriously considering installing a recent version on my other computer, and maybe the wife's laptop. It is so easy to use, and it's a serious system, not just something for older hardware. It's one of the best Linux distros out there, period.

Problem solved!

[mdiemer]

Actually, I spoke too soon. Windows did not fully boot. It started too, but got hung up at the login screen. I just assumed it was booting when I wrote the last reply, and all I needed to do was login and it would be fine. I tried the advanced menu and booted that drive directly, same thing happened. I'm sure this is solvable. I will try some Windows repair tools later on and see that goes. If no luck I'll be back tonight. no worries!

[bigpup]

but got hung up at the login screen.

So logging in does nothing?

[mdiemer]

but got hung up at the login screen.

So logging in does nothing?

I can't log in, it gets hung up, I just see the hourglass. I can boot Windows if I change boot priority in (bios), although it took awhile. But booting from grub4dos only gets me partway there.

I'm wondering if this could be due to having two Windows installs, one on sda and one on sdb (although the latter one is not "real" - I never used it, it may just be there because I had copied all sda files to sdb. This was all years ago and I don't remember exactly what happened.

Would installing grub4dos to sda also help? Or might it cause other problems, so I couldn't boot windows even from sda drive?

[mdiemer]

I'm going to search for Windows-related issues. Windows does, in fact, boot, it just hangs at login screen. This makes me think the problem is not with Linux but with windows. for example, maybe windows fast-boot is the issue. If it has it I will disable it. any other tips along these lines would be welcome.

[perdido]

This is a bit more complex than simply fixing your menu.lst, from what I have read the way to do win98 & puppy dual boot is use grub.exe

It is explained in this post by Bruce_B
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=43141

Hopefully you understand a little bit about editing MSDOS.SYS & CONFIG.SYS

Note that grub for linux is not used anywhere and that the windows partition is where it boots from. Bruce supplied a CONFIG.SYS to
download and changes to do to menu.lst and MSDOS.SYS, no changes to AUTOEXEC.BAT.
Also reinstalled the DOS MBR with the fdisk /mbr command.

His instructions should get you to displaying menu.lst using the grub.exe from windows instead of grub from linux.
.
The only hangup after following the instructions might be adjusting the puppy entry in menu.lst to find the other drive, but first I would just do
what he says and see where it gets you before adjusting menu.lst


..


.

[mdiemer]

Would it be simpler to do a frugal install? That way everything is on same drive, sda. Which is also the master drive. Right now, I have Puppy on the slave drive, and this might be part of the problem. Also, the drives are IDE. The usual dual-booting process, which I am very comfortable with, seems to be fraught with difficulties in this situation. If something goes wrong with the MBR, I know how to use fdisk /mbr from my W98 startup disk. I can make a system image first and just restore it, if things get totally whacked.

[mostly_lurking]

Would it be simpler to do a frugal install? That way everything is on same drive, sda. Which is also the master drive. Right now, I have Puppy on the slave drive, and this might be part of the problem.

I think the problem isn't so much Puppy on the slave drive, but the bootloader on the slave drive. (Or maybe something else entirely, who knows?) If you want to try installing a new bootloader on the master (Windows) drive, you might as well leave Puppy on the slave drive - it should have no problem being booted from another location.

[mdiemer]

Would it be simpler to do a frugal install? That way everything is on same drive, sda. Which is also the master drive. Right now, I have Puppy on the slave drive, and this might be part of the problem.

I think the problem isn't so much Puppy on the slave drive, but the bootloader on the slave drive. (Or maybe something else entirely, who knows?) If you want to try installing a new bootloader on the master (Windows) drive, you might as well leave Puppy on the slave drive - it should have no problem being booted from another location.

I'm too nervous about putting grub on sda. What if the same thing happens, and windows won't boot? I think it is best that I just keep Windows drive as default, and use the live CD. By the time I change the boot drive drive in bios, there's not that much difference in boot time. Maybe there's a way to dual boot Windows 98 and Puppy on this system using grub, but for now this seems to be the best solution,

[rockedge]

this is what I do......run Grub4Dos let it find the Puppies and install
open the menu.lst and change the Windows title to this:

you will need to change the uuid to match yours.

Code: Select all

# Windows
# this entry searches Windows on the HDD and boot it up
title Windows (sda1:PBS)
  uuid 0A0C871A0C86FFC5
  chainloader +1

this block has started Windows in all the versions I have tried to multi-boot with different Puppy Linux's and DebianDog's and now Corepup.

[mdiemer]

this is what I do......run Grub4Dos let it find the Puppies and install
open the menu.lst and change the Windows title to this:

you will need to change the uuid to match yours.

Code: Select all

# Windows
# this entry searches Windows on the HDD and boot it up
title Windows (sda1:PBS)
  uuid 0A0C871A0C86FFC5
  chainloader +1

this block has started Windows in all the versions I have tried to multi-boot with different Puppy Linux's and DebianDog's and now Corepup.

Wow, that looks promising rockedge, I'll try it. I have wondered about that message, which I see when I install Puppy. Here's hoping!

[mdiemer]

I can't figure out how to find W98 UUID. Not sure it has one. Have run some commands and even searched the registry, but to no avail.

[rockedge]

open a terminal (console) and type

Code: Select all

blkid

this will give you the uuid

[mikeslr]

Windows 98 doesn't have a UUID. No operating system has. The UUIDs are unique 128-bit numbers used to identify information in computer systems. Open a terminal and type, code:

blkid

and you'll obtain a display of every number assigned to each partition on your computer.

You can cut & paste them into a text file for later use.

Another way is to write a file to the top of the drive/partition on which Window's 98 is located with a unique name, such as --without the quotes 'WhereW98Lives.txt' .

Then, in grub4dos (or grub), start a listing on menu.lst with something like:

title Windows 98
find --set-root --ignore-floppies WhereW98Lives.txt

But I suspect that the problem you are having is that argument is being left out of menu.lst.

Post a copy of your entire menu.lst and maybe we can figure out what that is.

mikesLr

[mdiemer]

Thanks Mikesir for educating me re: UUID, I appreciate it. I ran the command and saved it to a Geany doc, which I also saved to floppy, so I can pass it between puppy 412 and Wary and maybe Windows if it is smart enough (which I doubt). I'm not feeling too smart myself at the moment, I can't seem to find the menu.lst. I have looked in the usual places, boot/grub/menu.lst, but it is not there. I also looked in mnt, but that is empty. Is it hidden?

Edit: I remembered I can get to to it by reinstalling grub4dos. Will do and make changes to menu.lst per instructions.

[mdiemer]

OK, I tried it, still no go. Here is the (edited) Windows block from menu.lst:

(Note: the computer is offline, no printer. I'm going to buy a usb floppy to swap between computers, so I can print out documents).

# Windows
# this entry searches Windows on the HDD an boot it up
title Windows (sda1:PBS)
UUID 1553-5EA
chainloader +1
map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map --hook
errorcheck off
find --set-root--ignore-floppies--ignore-cd /bootmgr
chainloader /bootmgr
find --set-root--ignore-floppies--ignore-cd /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
find --set-root --ignore-floppies -ignore cd /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
errorcheck on

Note: I bolded the changes per instructions