Problem booting from disk

[Condon Thomas A KPWA]

Folks,

The first part will look a bit like the last message, but that is just the
background.  Please read on.

I've been running SuSE 8.0 on my home system (primary
desktop/mail-reader/web surfer) for some time.  My boot and / disk is a 20GB
EIDE disk (master on Primary IDE).  I decided to upgrade to SuSE 9.0 while
adding an additional NIC and a 250GB EIDE drive.  So I carefully saved some
data and shut down normally.  I disconnected the old boot disk to insure
nothing could happen to it.

I'm having troubles booting off the new disk.

So I pulled out the SCSI card and disconnected the SCSI disks to insure they
would not be interfering or be harmed.  No change.

I've set the BIOS to only boot from floppy or CD, but I still get a "Failed
to boot from HD" error message that indicates I should go to the setup or
hit F1 to continue.

So, I finally figured that I *could* continue with the process by hitting F1
(I'm getting older and slower every day) and that it would then  boot from
the CD.  So I've started the SuSE install process and it has taken my data,
partitioned and formatted the disk, installed the preliminary software and
data and reboots the system to complete the install.  Oops.  I get the same
"Failed to boot from HD" problem (with or without BIOS selection of HD as a
boot option).

Hitting F1, however, restarts the SuSE install process.  Complete with
determining hardware and asking for partition setup (so it can re-partition
and format the disk).  Stuck in a 45 minute loop!

Turning the BIOS option to boot from hard disk back on, removing the SuSE CD
from the drive -- neither had any effect, singly or jointly.

At this point I'm trying the SuSE "Failsafe" install (which I notice does
not recognize the USB Flash Card reader), but don't expect that to work,
either.  If it doesn't I'll try resetting the BIOS to the "Failsafe"
settings (which didn't allow for all of my hardware).

However, I'm curious about what can cause this problem.  Why is it failing
an HD boot when there is no HD boot option selected in the BIOS?  Is my "not
very old" motherboard toast?

In a previous message I mentioned that it also balks on booting from the
previous HD, claiming problems with the ReiserFS partition (which should
have been fine after a gentle shut down).  This implies a problem with the
hardware of the motherboard, or the BIOS, to my non-hardware oriented mind.


In Harmony's Way and In A Chord,

Tom  ;-})

Tom Condon
Registered Linux User #154358
Plain Text Emails Don't Spread Virii!