Weird problem probably involving hard drive

[jasong]

Can anyone think of a reason that a computer can boot from a cd and access a hard drive, but as soon as you try to boot from the hard drive, and this happens with more than one OS, you get an error immediately?

I have a quad-core cpu and 2 GB of RAM. We were switching components from case to case, since in my old case, the power supply was just sort of sitting there without being connected to anything. So, other than the power supply and the case, it's the same components that originally worked fine.

[rx7350]

What is the error you are getting?

[jasong]

Originally Posted by rx7350

What is the error you are getting?

A disk read error occurred

Press Ctr+Alt+Del to restart.

[Uncwilly]

Sounds like a problem with the area where the OS resides.

[paulunderwood]

Is it a problem caused by master/slave/cable select pin jumper on HDD and CD? Do either share a cable to the mainboard?

Does the HDD have a boot program in the boot sector?

[jasong]

Originally Posted by paulunderwood

Is it a problem caused by master/slave/cable select pin jumper on HDD and CD? Do either share a cable to the mainboard?

There's only one hard drive, and I'm pretty sure it's set to master. I'll check tomorrow afternoon, so I'll be less likely to stay up until 0230 trying to figure it out, like last night.

Does the HDD have a boot program in the boot sector?

Good question. If neither Linux nor Windows XP cds install that, but instead, expect it to already be there, that could easily be the problem. Does booting with a cd bypass the problem? I'm running mprime successfully with a boot cd.

[paulunderwood]

It is tricky to get a boot program installed; There are many ways. From memory, you can boot the (Ubuntu) CD and run GRUB specifying the config file and the target -- most likely /dev/hda (if primary master). The config file is most like to reside on the HDD, so you will have to have it mounted, so that the config file will be something like /media/hda/boot/grub/menu.lst ("l" not "1"). Anyway, do a "man grub" for details, and "man mount" and "man umount". HTH

ps. CDs have master/slave modes too. If CD and HDD are both set to master and share the same ribbon you might have problems...

pps. run "fdisk /dev/hda" and check the boot flag is set for the linux partition. "man fdisk" too.

[Xyzzy]

pps. run "fdisk /dev/hda" and check the boot flag is set for the linux partition. "man fdisk" too.

Note the asterisk:

# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb8bfb8bf

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        9729    78148161   83  Linux

Does the drive show up in the BIOS?

First you need to make sure the drive is being seen physically before you start worrying about the MBR and stuff. There are numerous ways to install or repair a MBR.