Grub not detecting hard drive

[srg]

Hi

On one particular machine, I'm having trouble with installing grub on it's hard drive.

The machine is a Toshiba T2130CS laptop with a 527MB hard drive and as far as I know neither the drive or the BIOS supports LBA.

When I try to install GRUB on the drive, or even just use the root command (from a non file system grub floppy) I just get:

Error 22: No Partition

The drive has 1 FAT16 partition spanning the whole disk.

Thanks
srg

[ASHLEY4]

I have not used GRUB, but i think it works with CHS & LBA.
ASHLEY4.

[Pype.Clicker]

how exactly do you invoke the 'root' command ? afaik, it should be something like 'root (hd0)' or 'root(hd0,0)' ...

[srg]

how exactly do you invoke the 'root' command ? afaik, it should be something like 'root (hd0)' or 'root(hd0,0)' ...

root(hd0,0)

[Solar]

I know this is a long shot, but perhaps your system doesn't have a primary partition (and boots from (hd0,4) or something like that.

While you're on the GRUB shell, you can use the "cat" command to "search" for partitions. (Saves you going through boot cycles.) Type "cat (hd0,x)/" and hit the TAB key; if you hit the right partition you should be presented with a listing of the partition.

[srg]

I know this is a long shot, but perhaps your system doesn't have a primary partition (and boots from (hd0,4) or something like that.

While you're on the GRUB shell, you can use the "cat" command to "search" for partitions. (Saves you going through boot cycles.) Type "cat (hd0,x)/" and hit the TAB key; if you hit the right partition you should be presented with a listing of the partition.

I get Error11: Unrecongnised device string

It does have 1 primary partition and no extended partitions

[srg]

Weired

I deleted the partition and put on a new one, again primary FAT16 and 502MB and it worked

I'm guessing grub just didn't like that partition for some reason.

[iyg]

if there is only one partition, what is grub for ?
fat16, no swap, no linux ?

[Pype.Clicker]

iirc, some old DOS installations could live without a MBR and used the whole disk as if it was a partition ... i'm unsure about it, though ...

[Solar]

if there is only one partition, what is grub for ?

You can boot different operating systems off the very same partition, you know? Take your average Linux installation, which usually has more than one kernel in /boot. Or perhaps he wants to load - *gasp* - his own OS kernel off his FAT partition?

Doesn't matter. He had an issue with installing GRUB on his HD, and we tried to help him. Why is it important what he needs it for?

[srg]

if there is only one partition, what is grub for ?
fat16, no swap, no linux ?

Grub is not just an os multibooter (Like say Bootmagic is), you can use grub as part of your OSs boot process (a lot of us do).

Before I used grub, I was making my own chain loader but I got bogged down. With grub, I don't have to worry about loading in my kernel and swithing to pmode, as grub does this for me. Now I can just get on with my kernel.

srg

[srg]

iirc, some old DOS installations could live without a MBR and used the whole disk as if it was a partition ... i'm unsure about it, though ...

I haven't come across that before! Anyway before this, the machine was running Windows 95 OSR2, I had just formatted the partition using my Win98SE boot disk.

Anyway all's well that ends well.