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

[Greg Clifton]

Glad to be of assistance, but even more that you were able to resolve the
problem and get the system back in service. I was not successful with the
notebook, but there weren't as many tools and resources to tap into back in
the dark ages ;-).

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 11:23 AM, m-aaron-r <aaron at pd.org> wrote:

> 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...
> >>
> >>
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> >>
> >
> >
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