Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 27193
WinMe installation corrupted
Last modified: 2005-10-31 17:00:50 EST
Fisher WinMe is installed on /dev/sda1. I create standard partitions for /boot, /, swap, /usr, etc. Graphical install. Use Disk Druid to create partitions. I say that I want lilo installed on /dev/sda2 (/boot) partition, not on the MBR. Disk Druid apparently leaves /dev/sda1 as the active partition, so when I reboot it should start WinMe. This doesn't happen. Instead, a cursor appears and the system hangs. If I change the active partition to /dev/sda2 then I can access Linux, but never WinME. Interestingly, this doesn't happen if Win2K is on /dev/sda1 instead of WinME. I have no problems here. Win2K boots fine. I can then change the active partition to /dev/sda2 and add an entry for Win2K in /etc/lilo.conf and I have no problems. Also, I did a text install and used fdisk to create my partitions. WinMe is not destroyed when I do this.
Can QA install a windows Me box to verify this on? I do not have access to Windows anything.
do you have this same problem if you choose to NOT install lilo (but rather boot from floppy disk) ...? We have not seen this problem with DOS & Windows 95 & 98 in internal testing, but have not tried Windows ME yet...
additionally, are you able to dual boot linux & ME if you install LILO to the MBR of sda ...?
I'll see what I can do. I'm out on sales calls for awhile so it may be awhile before I can test this. It may be that the next tests I do are w/ RC1 Something else that I forgot to mention w/ re to this problem. After it occurs I can't even boot from a WinMe rescue floppy. The light blinks on and off a few times then the system halts. I certainly don't expect us to fix an MS problem, but I think the problem might be indicative of what is going on--my guess is that we are touching the MBR somehow even though I tell it otherwise: once I wipe the MBR (cat /var/log/messages > /dev/sda; reboot) I can boot the WinMe floppy w/o any problems. (I still have to reinstall WinME)
brief update: if I don't install LILO (but I do create a boot disk) the problem still occurs
another test, as requested: If I install LILO on the MBR LILO works but I still can't access WinMe -- it hangs when I choose that option off the lilo menu
Please try this out Brent.
I have seen Windows ME and Red Hat machines dual boot correctly, but they were all with IDE disk drives.
I tested this with SCSI drives today and could not reproduce.