At 16:02:58 on Saturday Saturday 23 October 2010, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2010/10/23 15:52 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:

...

If BIOS confusion is the reason for the problem, that would mean that the BIOS chip has stored somewhere the assumed order and location of the HDs. I have to wonder if there is not a way to delete that memory, perhaps by removing a jumper on the MB. I don't find any reference to such a jumper in the MB documentation (this is an Intel board, 915GAV -- an older board with a Pentium IV CPU).

When specific instructions for BIOS reset are missing from the manual, all that's usually required is to unplug the power supply, and remove the battery from the motherboard for several minutes or more. Usually in recent years these batteries have been common #2032 disk batteries readily available in stores. Maybe yours is pooping out prematurely. Does its clock keep accurate time when left off a few days at a time?

I might pull the battery and let the machine sit overnight. I think the last time the computer was off for long was in April, when I was out of the country for ten days. Right now, the clock is right on the button. I don't remember correcting the time since then, but if I did, it would not have been by over a minute or two. The MB is at least five years old, so I might replace the battery on general principles. But the fact that the GRUB in hd0 would have to be a separate matter altogether. I don't see how they can be related. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

At 08:28:02 on Sunday Sunday 24 October 2010, Thomas Taylor wrote:

On Sat, 23 Oct 2010 15:52:16 +0200

Stan Goodman wrote:

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I would like to summarize the background and the current situation of the inability of my desktop system to boot normally (I am able to boot it through grub commands), I would like to hope that someone will be able to offer a sollution for the problem.

The system has two HDs; at present, the active system is oS v22.3 on hd0,

^^^^^^ Where did you manage to get 22.3??? I'll assume that should have been 11.3, right?

It's very easy. You have to concentrate on building overconfidence in your touch-typing ability. It also helps if you use a spellchecker that doesn't understand numbers.

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while hd1 contains v11.1. Each of these has a /boot directory with its own GRUB; the MBR is generic, with no boot loader. Se;ectopm betweem tje, os

^^^^^^^^^ ^^^

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made by an IBM Boot Manager. Only the GRUB of hd1 is functional; trying to boot through the hd0 GRUB produces a black screen immediately after the POST routine.

Why an IBM boot manager instead of just GRUB? That adds complexity to the situation. Have you verified whether the IBM boot manager files are correct? That is the most likely location of the problem.

...

People I have consulted attribute the problem to the fact that at some point the data connectors of the two HDs were interchanged at the time that one of them was replaced by a new disk, thus confusing the BIOS, and this is entirely possible. On the other hand, the problem did not appear at the time I had the newe HD installed, but only quite a few weeks later. I don't understand why a confused BIOS would continue to function rationally for weeks before exhibiting schizoid symptoms. Also unexplained is why one of the GRUBs works and the other doesn't.

If BIOS confusion is the reason for the problem, that would mean that the BIOS chip has stored somewhere the assumed order and location of the HDs. I have to wonder if there is not a way to delete that memory, perhaps by removing a jumper on the MB. I don't find any reference to such a jumper in the MB documentation (this is an Intel board, 915GAV -- an older board with a Pentium IV CPU).

<snip>

All boot setup information in the BIOS is stored in CMOS memory on the motherboard. Do I interpret correctly that both hard drives booted correctly after replacing them, then suddenly failed?

Yes. It was weeks before the problem appeared. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org