Anybody else having this problem? LInux Mandrake 9 would install on my my PC but on reboot it hangs at the point where it enumerates the hard disks /ide on my PC. Debian 3 would do the same but since Debian allowed the creation of a boot disk at install, I can use it to boot into Debian. Redhat allowed the creation of the boot disk as well at install but it boots fine without the boot disk. My PC is a PIII 1 Ghz on a Abit VH6 II motherboard with 256 MB X 3 PC133 RAM with a Maxtor UltraATA100 card and four hds connected to this. I have another HD on ide0 of the motherboard and a combo cdr/dvd on the ide1 of the motherboard. My other PC can boot all three distros fine. It is a 566 Mhz Celeron on an ABit BH6 with 128 x3 PC133 RAM and ultra 66 promise controller. ide0 on the motherboard has a 30 g hd and ide0 on the ata66 card has 40 g hd. The VH6 II PC did not have any problem with LInux Mandrake 8 (but I had to do some funky things to install it like reversing the ide because of the documented problem with LM8 and ata66 controllers.)

It's that ata100 controller.

If I remember correctly it shows up as either /dev/hde or /dev/hdf, you also have to have a kernel with support for this thing compiled in, hopefully you are using one (does the kernel detect it, or just the older IDE ones?) In any case your boot loader probably is looking for something on /dev/hda. Make the change in lilo.conf (change the root=to the correct drive) and rerun lilo.

It detects it on install cause I even tried a configuration where it is installed on /dev/hde and still wont boot. THe installation process goes very well and completes. Its just the subsequent reboot that should boot the kernel which fails. It is currently on /dev/hda and I have no way to get to it.

Okay, lets try a little troubleshooting 101.

Put the Mandrake install CD in and boot on it. Do the "F1" thing for "Advanced Options" so it will drop you out to the old fashioned lilo prompt.

Then enter "rescure" at the prompt. Follow some of the menu choices (including the console) and see if you can figure out:

1) Is the controller really being properly detected and the driver installed

2) Are your partitions on the hard drive readable?

3) Are the disks enumerated like you expect: i.e. is hda really hda.

4) can you mount and read your file systems on the hard drive.

If all this goes right, you probably either have a mis-configured boot loader, or you might have installed a kernel that doesn't know about the ata100 controller, which is a different one than you just booted on.

If you don't figure it out at this point, post the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf (if you are using lilo as the boot loader, I don't know grub) if you can get to it, the ouput of "fdisk -l", and the section of "dmesg" that has anything to do with detecting your disk controllers, and detecting your hard drives (just a few lines) so that we can help you better.

Thank you very much for your help. I was able to use the Manrake boot disk in rescue mode and i looked at dmesg. There was a bunch of errors referring to my cd rom drive. When I disabled this or removed the media from it, I was able to boot to Linux. Thanks again