Topic: unable to boot from the C drive

[andy tran]

I tried to install the SME over the RedHat 8.0 on my C drive.

After going through all of the steps required in the installation program, it said "remove the floppy and CD while the machine is rebooting"

The machine kept going in and out of searching for the device to boot.  It is set to boot from CDROM, FLOPPY, then IDE-HDD (in that order).  But the machine is not bootable from the harddrive.  I can run everything from the boot diskette, the machine is configured correctly.  I can even access the Server Manager page remotely from a browser.  All things point to the bootstrapping.

I tried using the MaxBlast to Fdish and reFormat the drive, also tried to fdisk and remove all non-DOS partitions, then reinstall the SME5.6, but the same problem occurs.

I suspected that I need to fix the Master Boot Record, but do not know how and do not have the tool to do it.

Does anyone know the answer to this problem?

Does anyone

[Ed Form]

andy tran wrote:
>
> I suspected that I need to fix the Master Boot Record, but do
> not know how and do not have the tool to do it.
>
> Does anyone know the answer to this problem?

If the problem is a persistent item in the MBR the simplest cure is to replace it with something esay to handle. Boot the machine on a Windows 98 boot disk with standard Windows 98 FDISK and issue the command...

A:\> fdisk/mbr

This will give you a disk that will boot cleanly to a Windows C:\ prompt. Then run your install and all should be well.

For the few occasions where this doesn't cure the problem, the partitioning software of a standard Windows 2000 Professional install CD will delete anything.

Just allow the installation routine to run till the disk partitioning screen appears and choose the option to delete the existing partitions. Then abort the the install and bingo! A blank hard disk.

Ed Form