Rescue from a floppy?

[Lemke, Wesley]

Update:

I got the computer to boot from cd.  It was weird, if I went into the
CMOS settings, the CD-Rom would be there, but it wouldn't list it on
boot, it just showed my two HDs.  So I flashed the bios, and then it
would list (and boot from) my CD.  I had quite an old version:	WW >> WZ
>> YH >> ZT >> 3C >> 3R >> 4A >> 64 >> 7N >> A9, I went from YH to A9.

However, I was still unable to install XP.  This might be the wrong
place to ask this, but you guys seem to be a very knowledgable bunch :)

When I try to boot from the XP cd (it is a burned, copy, I bought a CoA,
and had a friend burn a cd for me), I get the message:  CDBOOT:
Couldn't find NTLDR  

At first I thought it was the way I had my drives set up (/dev/hda1 had
linux on it, and I was going to put XP on /dev/hdb1).  So I switch the
cables around, edited grub, and I now have linux on /dev/hdb1, and I am
going to install XP on /dev/hda1 (cd is /dev/hdc).  That still didn't
work, I got the same CDBOOT message.

I also had created the six boot floppy's from Microsoft, so I figured
I'd boot from them.  After it asks for the second floppy I get this
message:

ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded
Error Code 7

I found this article on Microsoft's knowledge base:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;812580&Product=w
inxp  
Basically it says there is an problem with detecting ACPI, and I should
hit F7 when it is asking me if I need to load SCSI/RAID Drivers.  I
tried that and still got the error 7.  Has anyone else experienced this?
Should I try again, but just keep hitting F7?

There was another article on Microsoft's site, but it was for win2000:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318729&Product=w
in2000

This one says it could some bios settings, or bad memory.  I reset the
bios to the default and it still didn't work.  I also let memtest86 run
for about an hour and a half, and got no errors.


I'm going to have my friend re-burn the cd, but does anyone have any
other suggestions?

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces redhat com
[mailto:fedora-list-bounces redhat com] On Behalf Of Bob Chiodini
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 9:21 AM
To: For users of Fedora Core releases
Subject: RE: Rescue from a floppy?


On Wed, 2004-07-21 at 09:58, Lemke, Wesley wrote:
> Yes, I was able to read the media once booted into fedora, and I think

> that the drive is detected by the BIOS (although now that I think of 
> it, I'm not 100% sure on that....I'll have to double check at home 
> tonight). If it isn't detected by the BIOS, how can I fix that?
> 
> This is a Plextor CD-RW drive, and it is the only optical drive in the

> system.
> 

Try moving the drive to either other IDE interface.  Also, if it's the
slave try making it the master.  In my case, I ended up replacing the
drive.

If the BIOS is detecting the drive at boot time, an earlier suggestion
of burning a new disk seems appropriate.  If possible try a blank from a
different manufacturer than the first.  We've seen some very marginal
media.  My rule of thumb (right or wrong):  If you can see through the
disk get another brand.  Also, the score given by cdrecord seems to be a
pretty good indicator.  The marginal disks I've seen were scored at B-
or C, were gold in color (viewed from either side, i.e. no label), and
had no labeling on the package.

Sorry not much help, but real wordy :-).

Bob...