[NTLUG:Discuss] Boot problem After Removal of GRUB

[Robert Pearson]

We can drop "white box".
My "white-box" definition was no-name-brand PC clone hardware.

Terry Henderson wrote:
> Grub had instructions to boot Win-2K on first IDE port's primary drive
> but power was off - no mystery there.  (Grub doesn't "see the drive",
> the BIOS does.  Grub [only] contains boot instructions.)
> 

Setup did not see the "first IDE port's primary drive". I checked.
This looks like my point of confusion.
The BIOS passes instructions to GRUB to boot a Win-2K drive on IDE Primary?
How does the BIOS know this? How do I change this?
Doesn't the BIOS read the drive signature at boot time and assign some
information that is passed to the bootloader?
When I power these removable drives off they do not show up in Setup.

I went through the Windows boot sequence information but I never found
a good explanation for how the "drive" is detected.
How does Linux do it?
This may be beyond the scope of NTLUG.
I know how Sun does it. I guess Sun spoiled me forever.

Maybe I need some in-depth reading at Tom's Hardware. Any suggestions
are appreciated.

> fdisk /mbr
> should have done the trick.
> 

"fdisk /mbr" did not work on this machine or the one in 2003.
The only thing that works is either---
(1) the long slow boot, hardware reset, slightly faster second boot---
or
(2) Put a drive that is formatted in the IDE Primary Slave slot and power it on.
With option 2 the machine boots as it should and has for years.

Something below the OS, and maybe even the bootloader, is still
looking for the IDE Primary Slave where I installed Debian and GRUB.

Terry Henderson wrote:
> The only way that's going to work is if you tell your BIOS to boot to
> the slave, (when you want to boot Linux).  If you want a dual boot
> system, you need to write boot loader to the first IDE primary drive's
> MBR.  But I think that's what you've done anyway.  Right?

Here is what I did---
(1) Powered off, but did not remove,  the Win-2K drive (IDE Primary
Master [set on the drive])
(2) Checked Setup for which drives it saw. Only the Primary Slave was seen.
    (a) I thought if Setup can't see a drive it can't be used.
(3) Installed Debian "sarge" to the IDE Primary Slave (set on drive)
(4) Booted the machine. GRUB came up but there was no Win-2K choice.
GRUB made some comments about seeing a "removable" drive but couldn't
read it. I assume GRUB installed on the Primary Slave.
(5) Debian came up
(6) Shut down Debian
(7) Powered down the Debian drive (IDE Primary Slave)
(8) Powered up the Win-2K drive (IDE Primary Master)
(8) No Win-2K boot, Just sat there.
    (a) Win-2K IDE Primary Master drive was detected in Setup
    (b) Debian IDE Primary Slave drive was not detected in Setup
(9) Turned on the Debian drive
(10) Booted.
(11) GRUB menu came up and both OS/s were there
(12) I picked Win-2K and everything worked fine
(13) All the problems started when I tried recovering to a single disk
Win-2K system. This was a learning experience.
(14) I learned there is more to disk drives, IDE, CMOS and BIOS than I know.

Thanks,

Robert