My new box... no boot!

[Dapper Dan]

If you're running FB, then I imagine your hard drive is sound.

What distro? FC 2? Did you by chance tell grub to install to floppy? You could do an upgrade to your OS, rather than a new install. Depending on distro, it may give you the chance to revise and/or update Grub/Lilo. Whichever you go with, install it to the MBR.

[gstuartj]

In answer to what distro, I've tried SuSE 9.1 Pers, and Yoper (for temporary use), both of which installed the boot loader to the MBR, and neither booted. I do have a floppy I can use to boot temporarily, though I'm using a borrowed floppy drive, so I hope to resolve this quickly.. I am currently in the process of downloading th 64 bit version of FC2 for the permanent install.

[gstuartj]

New symptom alert! After I install the temporary SuSE system, the bootloader only stays installed the first time I boot up after the install! If I use the floppy to get to the bootloader after the first boot, all I get is a GRUB> prompt! Is my MBR just totally screwed up?

[gstuartj]

Aha! I fixed it! Apparently, although my jumper on my HD was on the master setting, it wasn't making a connection between the two pins, so I substituted a bit of wire for the jumper, and it boots! Yay!

[Dapper Dan]

Whew! That's really good to know gstuartj, cause it had my brain racked to come up with a solution! Congratulations!

[gstuartj]

Thanks for the help Dapper, and everyone else!

[Stefann]

Here's my boot partition info. (Device Size Filesystem Mount Start End)
/dev/hde2 12.3 MB ext2 /boot 0 24

/dev/hde2 it is PHYSICALLY the secondary SLAVE drive no wonder you are having problems you need to change the IDE cables around, it needs to be on the first one at least origonally otherwise boot would be impossible.

[gstuartj]

No, the cables are right. In any case, it's working now!