RE: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

[Treutwein Bernhard]

Hi Joshua,

although I'm not shure if the following really helps
but you could try it ...

Setup your FAT partition first. Does not need
to be DOS bootable, But it should contain the
Grub directory tree ...

After installing your 1st Windows, grab the MBR
and put it into your FAT drive. 

Now install Grub (booting the floppy and doing
the 
        root (hd0,x)
        setup (hd0)

and try chainloading the saved MBR with

        chainload (hd0,x)/MBR-Sav1
        boot

(you can do that from the commandline).

and so on ...

regards
--
        Bernhard Treutwein, IuK, Ref. III A 3
        Bernhard.Treutwein(at)verwaltung uni-muenchen de

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joshua Foster [mailto:address@hidden 
> Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 10:03 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
> 
> 
> Trying this again, as it appears the first message didn't get 
> through...
> 
> We have a 4-gigabyte hard drive with two Windows NT 4 
> partitions which we wish to boot with GRUB.  I know the NT 
> Bootloader will handle this, but we need to do it with GRUB 
> (we're working on some GRUB modifications that will auto-boot 
> one of the partitions based on some hardware parameters).
> 
> Our procedure is this:
> 
> 1) Install the first WinNT partition on the first 2 gigs
> 2) Boot with a GRUB boot floppy, hide the partition with 
> "hide (hd0,0)"  (We want the second WinNT not to see the 
> first one so it will install its own
> bootloader)
> 3) Install the second WinNT partition on the last 2 gigs 
> (leaving a few megabytes free at the end)
> 
> At this point, everything works great, and we're able to boot 
> either partition through the GRUB boot disk with the 
> following commands (assuming X = partition to boot and Y = 
> other WinNT partition):
>   hide (hd0,Y)
>   unhide (hd0,X)
>   rootnoverify (hd0,X)
>   chainloader +1
>   makeactive
>   boot
> 
> Now we'd like make a third partition for GRUB (out of the 
> last few megs on the disk) and boot from that instead of 
> booting from the floppy. So we do the following steps:
> 4) Create a FAT partition out of those last few megs on the 
> disk, copy the contents of the GRUB floppy into it.
> 5) Boot with the GRUB floppy, install GRUB to the MBR using 
> "root (hd0,2)" and "setup (hd0)"
> 
> >From this point on, neither OS will boot.  GRUB loads from the third
> partition, but trying to boot either WinNT partition (with the above
> commands) we get an NT error about INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.  
> Even if we try to go back and use the GRUB boot floppy, we 
> still get the same error. 
> However, if we boot with a DOS floppy and rewrite the MBR 
> with "fdisk /mbr", we're once again able to boot either 
> partition using the GRUB floppy.
> 
> I understand this may be a WinNT error and not a GRUB error, 
> but there is something being written to the MBR during the 
> "setup (hd0)" that prevents either partition from loading, 
> whether GRUB is run from the third partition or the floppy...
> 
> Any suggestions as to what is going on here?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Joshua Foster
> Defense Technologies, Inc.
> 
> ________________________________________
> 
> Joshua Foster
> Sr. Computer Programmer
> 1627 Spencer Mountain Rd., Ranlo
> Gastonia, NC 28054
> (704)824-0199, ext. 207
> (704)824-0241 Fax
> www.dtiweb.net
> address@hidden
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>