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Thanks for the suggestion Russell. I tried it then reinstalled grub on the mbr. No soap. "non system disk or disk error"<BR> <BR>
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From: rglissma@gmail.com<BR>Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:22:20 -0700<BR>To: clue-tech@cluedenver.org<BR>Subject: Re: [clue-tech] Compaq Armada 3500<BR><BR>If you want to change the MBR, you can again use the Win 98 FDisk with the command: fdisk /mbr. This will only correct the MBR back to a "normal" mbr. Usually I've used this when getting rid of lilo, but it may help in this situation as well.<BR><BR>
<DIV class=ecxgmail_quote>On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Bill Smith <SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:wpsmithii@msn.com">wpsmithii@msn.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex" class=ecxgmail_quote>
<DIV>I took this to the installfest in hopes of getting it fixed. Thanks again to Jon and David A. for spending so much time on it. A little history, the original drive that was in it is a 4 gig IBM Travelstar. I installed Debian on it for a class about Linux some time ago, and I think that was the original hdd in this computer. Without any problems. I recently purchased a 20 gig Hitachi Travelstar used. The shop I bought it from ran a recert test and it passed. The 20 g is supposed to be the largest the BIOS will recognize, and that seems to be the case. I have run OEM software, "drive fitness testing" and "feature tool" without significant problems. At the installfest we decided we needed to run fdisk on the 20 g because it would not boot and gave me a "non system disk or disk error" when we tried to boot. The newest Debian seems to install correctly, and recognized the hdd as a 20 g, it even downloaded and installed some software specific to laptops. I ran fdisk from an old Win 98 SE install cd as it seemed to be the most contemporary software I had, then reinstalled the latest v. of Debian. I'm getting the same error. As I understand it fdisk is supposed to rewrite the MBR and check the drive, it did whatever without errors.<BR>The odd thing about this box is that there is supposed to be a "Diagnostics Partition" at the begining of the HDD, David built me a CD with the HP tools to do this and it would not create the partition, even after fdisk was run. I have the instructions from the HP forum to create it and the tools now as well. The CD seems to worki flawlessly as I was able to access the BIOS and make and save a change and then change it back, (memory test then back to quick boot). I tried to run a low level format of the hdd with the OEM tools and it told me the drive was not a Hitachi drive, some problem there.<BR>I think there is some sort of problem with the MBR on the 20 g, but I have not been able to find it, at one point, while trying to access the BIOS (pressing F10) I got the grub loading please wait then it hung at grub error 25, that was several reinstalls ago, and I have not been able to reproduce it since.<BR>Sorry for the long post but I'm stumped. Bill Smith<BR></DIV><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>clue-tech mailing list<BR><A href="mailto:clue-tech@cluedenver.org">clue-tech@cluedenver.org</A><BR><A href="http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech" target=_blank>http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech</A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR>_______________________________________________ clue-tech mailing list clue-tech@cluedenver.org http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-tech </body>
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