[syslinux] syslinux and PQMAGIC incompatibility

[H. Peter Anvin]

Mircea Popescu wrote:

>  I have this problem:
>  I've partitioned my hard drive with PQMagic 7 in the following way:
> hda1 - fat32
> hda2 - ext2
> hda3 - fat16
> hda4 - extended
>        hda5 - Linux Swap
>        hda6 - fat32
>        hda7 - ext2
>        hda8 - fat32
> 
> I've put syslinux on hda3, but it fails to boot.
> 


Does hda3 extend beyond cylinder 1024?


> I've partitioned my second hard drive also with PQMAGIC 7 in two primary
> fat16 partitions and syslinux was not working either.
> 
> BUT using Ranish Partition Manager and saving it's standard IPL into the MBR
> of my secondary hard drive, syslinux worked just fine.


Did you have anything to write an MBR in the first place?


> MY QUESTION IS:
>   WHAT CAN I DO FOR MY FIRST HARD DRIVE, BECAUSE PARTITION MANAGER FROM
> RANISH FAILS TO READ CORRECTLY THE PARTITION TABLE MADE BY PQMAGIC 7 ON MY
> FIRST HARD.


Without knowing what the heck these two are doing to your system it's 
really hard.  If you have a DOS/Win9x partition or boot floppy, I would 
suggest trying the command "FDISK /MBR" to rewrite the MBR.
	
	-hpa