boot problems

[John G. Heim]

I would disconnect the internal hard drive to make sure the external 
drive is bootable. In other words, boot with the only bootable drive in 
the machine being the external drive and see if the BIOS finds it.




On 06/03/14 13:08, aerospace1028 at hotmail.com wrote:
> Hello list,
> I took advantage of having free-time today--while there was no chance
> predicted for any thunderstorms in the area--to install archlinux on my
> external harddrive.  I followed all the steps with minimal problem.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems Kyle's warning was correct.  When I start the
> machine with the drive connected, it still goes straight to Windows.
> I'm going to have someone double-check the boot order in the bios to be
> certain the usb-drive preceeds the internal harddrive.  If it is a case
> of the external drive not spinning up fast enough for the bios, is there
> any way to make the computer more patient?  or am I just out of luck?
>
> I made sure that syslinux pointed to the correct drive (/dev/sdb1)
> instead of its default of /dev/sda3 before rebooting the machine.  I've
> gone in and copied the UUID from /etc/fstab (I ran genfstab with the -U
> flag) and pasted it into the sysllinux.cfg entry.  But to the best of my
> knowledge, the boot process isn't even getting to syslinux.  After the
> manufacturer's logo screen, it appears to go straight to the Windows
> logo.  The external drive /is/ spinning, I can hear it working.
>
> Not sure whate else to look at/try.
>
> Thanks :-)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blinux-list mailing list
> Blinux-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list
>

-- 
---
John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim at math.wisc.edu