[Daniel T]

Being a webdeveloper I decided I'd try setting up a dedicated home linux HTTP testing server. I chose to use Debian for this.

Before installing, the hard drive was completely blank and had not been partitioned. I enabled the GRUB thing or whatever it was... and when I boot I get the following message...

GRUB Loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 18

... and nothing happens, it just stops.

It may be helpful to know that I'm running this on a Compaq Deskpro 2000, which does not have a BIOS (because the geniuses put the BIOS on a seperate partition of the HDD and when I wiped the hard drive the BIOS went aswell).

Help?

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

[ozar]

Here's a list of grub errors from the grub manual:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...roubleshooting

[TheBigPhish]

Originally Posted by Daniel T

Being a webdeveloper I decided I'd try setting up a dedicated home linux HTTP testing server. I chose to use Debian for this.

Before installing, the hard drive was completely blank and had not been partitioned. I enabled the GRUB thing or whatever it was... and when I boot I get the following message...
... and nothing happens, it just stops.

It may be helpful to know that I'm running this on a Compaq Deskpro 2000, which does not have a BIOS (because the geniuses put the BIOS on a seperate partition of the HDD and when I wiped the hard drive the BIOS went aswell)

ok, well...that's not ENTIRELY accurate.

The deskpro does infact have a BIOS, it is what allows the motherboard to talk on a basic level to your hardware. It is contained on a chip, NOT on some separate partition on the HD. In your second paragraph you said that the HD was completely blank, and not partitioned...yet in your third you said that it was a separate partition that went away when you wiped it. Which was it?

You may have had some kind of logical block manager on your HDD which was a low-level program which allowed the strange drive geometry (lots of heads - as your error 18 might indicate) to work with the basic BIOS of your system. Honestly? It all just sounds like a drive size too big for your BIOS.

Try repartitioning to a smaller partition size or a smaller HDD over all, upgrade your BIOS, or find out if there is a specific system fix for the deskpro.

[budman7]

The BIOS should not even be on the hard drive.
You are probably thinking of the rescue partition.

During bootup, do you see a message like

Press xxx to enter setup



That will get you into the BIOS and you can change it to Auto insyead of LBA or whatever it is at.

[shag05]

Daniel T, I had this exact problem on a Compaq Deskpro EN P550. I recently installed a 200GB hard drive. At first, debian (actually grub) produced the "Error 18". After some research, I found the Compaq BIOS (press <F10> to enter BIOS on boot) had "IDE Translation" (something like that) "Enabled".

This forced the BIOS to only see 6.4GB of my whopping 200GB drive. Of course, this caused the Grub loader to "freak out" because it could not find the kernel files.

The "short and sweet" answer was to DISABLE the "IDE Translation" in the BIOS... all is now well and I am typing this from my new Debian install... GREAT!

Ohhh, by the way, if you receive the "<F1>: Boot" message for any reason, send me an email at shag_nospam@earthlink.net. I have a fix for that. Unfortunately, I do not have the link on this new Debian install. It is still on my Winbloze laptop. (

Please post back if this helps or send me an email.

[Daniel T]

Uh oh, terribly sorry for not replying... I assumed it would send me an email when someone replied to my thread (like it does for other vBulletin forums I am a member of) but I guess that's an option I have to enable first.

ozar - thanks, I'll take a look at that and edit this post if it gets me anywhere

TheBigPhish - I used DBAN to 'autonuke' everything... as for entering the BIOS, I have tried near-every key/combination of keys on the keyboard and not a single one has worked! And no, there's no message saying which to press. I can't find where it was that I read the BIOS was installed on an HDD partition on Compaq Deskpros... perhaps I misunderstood it. Anyways, all I know is I have never been able to get into the BIOS on it.

shag05 - I'll give that a try if I can get into BIOS.

Thanks everyone.

[Daniel T]

*bump*

Nothing has worked to get into BIOS... is there possible something I have to change on the motherboard to enable BIOS access?

[JesusLives]

Hi, I've looked at the date of the last post and know that this is months off the pulse, but, I had this problem too and was looking in this list for an answer. The help as to what Error 18 was, as above, a hard-disk read on the wrong cyclinder or such like, took me to do 2 things in the BIOS of my PC. I took block mode off the HD and manually detected it - rather than leaving it as auto detect on boot up. I haven't investigated which or if both were needed, but it got me past my problem and Ubuntu ran!

As for Compaq PC, I have a Presario desktop and it's BIOS screen is obtained, by pressing F10.

Hope this helps someone.

[Woodsy]

I realise that this thread is pretty old but I just wanted to say that I've got an old Compaq AP400 (desktop) which by design you can't get into the BIOS from the COMPAQ splash screen. To get into the BIOS you need to make some boot disks and you can download the exe to do this from the HP website (make sure you get the English version )

cheers.