topic mbr access by bios on pavilion zt1170 in Operating System - Linux

mbr access by bios on pavilion zt1170

John Franey — Fri, 22 Feb 2002 00:40:59 GMT

Hi,

My zt1170 is not booting from linux redhat or debian boot cd. The bios is set to boot from cd first, it looks and prints: non bootable cdrom, then boots from harddrive.

The redhat cd I tried has booted several desktops. I downloaded again and burned (using iso) another redhad cd.
I also downloaded the debian cd for network install; no go.

Recovery disk boots.

Bios version IB.M1.03
Is there any reason why this bios won't read the MBR?

Thanks
John

Re: mbr access by bios on pavilion zt1170

Mark Fenton — Fri, 22 Feb 2002 03:17:32 GMT

The error seems to indicate that the cdrom drive itself doesn't support booting.

Does the drive boot other boxes?

((some older cdrom drives wouldn't support booting, but would function fine in every other regard...))

Re: mbr access by bios on pavilion zt1170

John Franey — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 01:39:16 GMT

thanks for reply.

Yes. The pavilion does boot other disks: the XP recovery disk which came with the laptop.

I discovered that I can get the Debian disk to boot if and only if the laptop is reset while XP is running. Redhat does not boot in this fashion.

This is what I must do to get the Debian disk to boot. After starting XP to the login screen, or later, I press the reset button on the back of the laptop. This causes power to shutdown. Then, turn on the laptop and voila, the bios can read the boot disk's mbr.

If I ctrl-alt-del at that point, the cdrom disk will boot again. If I remove the disk, and let XP start to boot, then hit ctrl-alt-del, the cdrom will NOT boot.

I have no strong preference for debian or Redhat, so I have gotten past this odd problem. However, this behavior seems strange to me. Does it to you?

John