Dual-Booting With RedHat 7 and Windows 98

[Scythe]

I am trying to dual-boot RH7 and W98, and it's not working. (well, heh, that's obvious, otherwise I wouldn't post in "technical support" :) )

Anyway, I'm running Red Hat 7 on my primary master drive, and everything (minus the modem, but that's a topic for after this problem is resolved :) ) is running fine. I use LILO to boot it, and haven't switched to a new kernel or anything of the type, basically everything's on default settings. The drive it's on is a Western Digital 8.6GB Caviar.

Win98 is on my primary slave drive, and it also boots fine if I just tell my BIOS to boot straight to that drive. That drive is a Western Digital 30.6GB Caviar (gotta have space for games :) ). However, LILO won't boot to it at all. It doesn't give me any "L10 10 10" message (as was mentioned in the NHF), it just sits there, cursor happily blinking away. I've let it sit for half an hour to make sure it wasn't just booting slowly (W98 bootup takes about 4-6 minutes for me normally, from POST to network login), no go. I can still turn the system's power off and even do a soft restart, but it won't boot.

I haven't modified my LILO configuration in any way besides commenting out the bootmessage line (text boot is fine for me :) ) but I can post my lilo.conf if anyone thinks it will help.

To recap:
Linux boots fine with LILO.
Win98 boots fine direct from the BIOS.
Win98 doesn't do jack with LILO booting it.

Oh, and both boot from way before the 1024th cylinder.

Sorry for the semi-disjointed nature of this post, and thanks in advance for any help I can get. :)

[freaker]

why dont you post lilo.conf -
easier to detect a problem..


freaker :cool:

[Scythe]

After about a half-hour and about 8 reboots, I've got lilo.conf for you (damn Windows not recognizing the Zip, CDROM, and NIC after I reboot from Linux for some reason, and then damn again for lilo.conf not being on the Zip when it's finally recognized!) But, anyway, here it is, my copy of lilo.conf:

boot = /dev/hda
timeout = 30
linear
prompt
  default = linux
  vga = normal
  read-only
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
  label = linux
  vga = normal
  root = /dev/hda5
other = /dev/hda1
  label = dos

[ 20 March 2001: Message edited by: Scythe ]

[fancypiper]

Win98 is on my primary slave drive

other = /dev/hda1
label = dos

The primary slave drove is hdb, so replace /dev/hda1 with /dev/hdb1

[freaker]

Originally posted by fancypiper:
other = /dev/hda1
label = dos

The primary slave drove is hdb, so replace /dev/hda1 with /dev/hdb1[/B]

ditto


freaker :cool:

[Scythe]

That apparently was a copy error (had to view the file, then copy it down on paper and type it again). lilo.conf already had /dev/hdb1 in there when I just looked at it. To be safe, I even re-ran lilo and tried the dos option again. No go. Any other ideas? :)

[bdg1983]

As far as I know, Win98 doesn't like to be on anything other than Primary/Master.

Unless you can somehow get it working, you would be better off putting Windows on the Master and Linux on the Slave.

[Scythe]

Yes, I've heard that, but it boots fine, even on the primary slave, if I just tell the BIOS to boot that drive instead of the primary master, so I'm not sure that matters in this case...

[Linuxcool]

I believe that you need to add one more line to your lilo.conf file.
At the end of your file where it says ' label = dos ', add this line after it: ' table = /dev/hdb '.

[ 21 March 2001: Message edited by: Linuxcool ]

[Scythe]

Added the "table = /dev/hdb" line, and now it says "Loading dos" before it stops doing things.. hey, progress :)

[Linuxcool]

You said that you could boot Win 98 by changing a setting in the bios. Maybe Win 98 can be fooled by adding four lines to your lilo.conf file. After this line ' table = /dev/hdb ' add these four lines:
map-drive = 0x80
to = 0x81
map-drive = 0x81
to = 0x80

There are no guarantees that this will work.

[ 23 March 2001: Message edited by: Linuxcool ]

[Scythe]

While there might have been no guarantees on its success, it did in fact work perfectly. :)

Woohoo! I can use LILO to boot Win98! Thanks to all of you that helped! (now, if only my modem worked... but that's for another topic anyway if I can't figure it out myself...) :)