[SWLUG] Transferred disk but wont boot

[Mark Henderson]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:46:28 +0100, Neil Jones <neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk>  
wrote:

> I have taken a linux disk out of a dual boot two disk machine and
> installed it as a single disk in a machine that used to run windows.
> This is a modern distro (mandriva 2008.)
> . The machine won't boot. It gets as far as verifying DMA pool data and
> hangs.
>
> Can anyone tell me how I can fix this? What is the problem?
>
> Neil
> neil at nwjones.demon.co.uk

I'm not really an expert, but as no-one else has replied yet...

Which disk did the two-disk machine boot from? I'm guessing it was the  
other one as it sounds like you don't have a MBR (master boot record) on  
the disk in question - this is what the PC looks for to know where to go  
to boot - the MBR simply says 'go here to find what you need to keep  
going'. So, you'll need to get Grub or Lilo or another boot loader  
installed on it. There's a few ways I can think of that you could go about  
doing that, booting with a rescue disk is probably the easiest. Might be  
safest to google or ask wait for someone knowledgable to reply :-)

HTH,
Mark


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