[ale] Hard Drive "boot sector" Question (solved)

[m-aaron-r]

Thanks Greg -- You hit the nail on the head, as I discovered
after some further experimentation. Fortunately, though, the
Compaq windisease BIOS issue wasn't quite as much of a
show stopper as it was with the Compaq laptop you mention.

When I ran the install using my spare hard drive it completed
and booted without issue.  OK... this is weird!  So I can put
a DIFFERENT drive in and it works.

Using the suggested dd method, I blew away the MBR on the
original hard drive and ran the install on that again.  (I checked
that the /boot sector was being written to and could see that
GRUB was installing, but something was confusing it at boot).
Even after blowing the MBR, it STILL wouldn't boot to the
original disk after install -- with GRUB reporting the same
"can't find device ######-#######-#######"

So I went back and really dug through the funky, non-standard
BIOS on the box.  Under :SECURITY/SYSTEM ID's I had noticed
a "Drive ID" entry with about 10 hexadecimal values, but you
couldn't edit it or remove it.  Digging further in the :ADVANCED
menu I noticed this odd UUID item, and I promptly disabled
it.  Back under :SECURITY/SYSTEM ID's the Drive ID entry
was now absent.  I also made sure that the odd entry for
:SECURITY/MBR SECURITY was Disabled.

With the (hard coded?) UUID Disabled in the evil Compaq
BIOS, I ran the install on the original disk again and
PROBLEM SOLVED -- the system booted to the original
disk just fine!

Just for grins, I went in and re-Enabled the UUID now that
the install was done and the system STILL BOOTS!   My
guess is that the UUID in the BIOS was reporting bogus or
non-standard information to the GRUB config script when
installing to the original disk was the one being installed.

Compaq made it a PITA, but I got the install done.  Ubuntu
10.04 looks pretty slick, too!

Thanks again to the list for the help and suggestions.

peace
aaron


On 2010/05/23, at 06:30 , Greg Clifton wrote:

> Dude, you may be screwed. Older (pre HP) Compaq's had some of
> the system BIOS written on the hard drive or some such crap that
> forced you to buy any replacement hard drive from Compaq
> (at ridiculously HIGH price). I once ran into the problem on an old
> Compaq notebook that I could not get to boot after I upgraded the
> HDD (this was like 15yrs. ago, so I don't think it was a drive  
> geometry
> issue that far back since the choice in 2.5" HDDs was pretty limited).
> Maybe there is a Compaq format utility on the web somewhere
> that would write the required info to the drive, otherwise I doubt
> it will work.
>
> GC
>
> On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 9:50 PM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us>  
> wrote:
> I wrote it in the web browser, so I sent it at gmail time. So, whose  
> got the non-sync'd clock: you or gmail? ;)
>
> --
> Sent from my ADP1 running Android 2.1
>
>
>> On May 22, 2010 8:27 PM, "Paul Cartwright" <ale at pcartwright.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>> On Sat May 22 20:08:35 2010, Michael Trausch wrote:
>>
>> hmm, you supposedly wrote that at 8:35pm, yet I'm responding and my  
>> clock says
>> 8:24pm now..
>> # date
>> Sat May 22 20:26:23 EDT 2010
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Paul Cartwright
>> Registered Linux user # 367800
>> Registered Ubuntu User #12459
>> http://usdebtclo...
>>
>>
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS...
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo