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Weird Windows Booting Issues On Athlons?
"This would normally point to something being flaky in hardware, (OS not booting from any boot device); however, it still boots Linux without any issues at all. If I try booting from a Windows 98 CD, I get the Boot from CD/Hard disk menu, but as soon as I choose CD, the computer screen goes black, places a flashing cursor in the top-left corner, and does nothing. No disk accesses or otherwise.
I have reset the CMOS settings via the Jumper settings on the motherboard, and then set the CMOS to use failsafe settings to no avail. I have tried removing all cards from the system except the video card, and I have even tried booting from another Windows Hard disk with no luck.
This is all pointing to a problem with the CPU/Motherboard not liking the Windows Boot code as far as I can tell. Has anyone experienced anything like this? I really would like the system back to the way it was working before."
Linux is working fine. Windows isn't even booting.
What are you complaining about?
Sorry, I just had to say it..
Seriously though, do you have a local Linux User Group? I've found the best answers to this sort of technical minutae through places/people/discussion groups like that.. (yes yes slashdot is one large discussion group... BUT)
Clearly your processor has made the Right Choice{tm}, saving you the bother.
I don't own an Athlon, but a friend of mine had a very similar problem with his Atlhon. He kept taking it back to the shop (and fortunately they were local and they knew what they were doing), and eventually they figured out that he needed a better (and bigger) power supply. Evidently Windows *still* doesn't idle the processor when nothing is going on, the way Linux does, so it uses a lot more power and runs hotter.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
The thing I see most about Athlons is the power supply being too weak. Do yourself a favor : spend a few more bucks and get a 300w power supply. The Athlon cpu itself isn't that power hungry (esp. in the case of Durons), but the motherboard's chipset more than makes up for it. Also if your video card is monstrous (Geforce2 and Voodoo5), that will also be sucking down alot of juice.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
We see this issue on and off when we try to squeeze a larger hard drive/incompatible harddrive into a new system. Usually, we are able to format and ghost a system without errors, then when it boots, it just goes to a flashing prompt in the upper left corner, never to boot again. If we try to boot off a floppy or CD at that point, it just kicks out to the same prompt, like what you are seeing. The only way we can recover this is to use a third party utility, like EZdrive. the system WILL boot to an EZdrive disk for some reason. Check the disk access mode in the BIOS, and harddrive parameters. Maybe LILO is fine, boot sector under the FAT partition is freaking out. Otherwise, a larger power supply won't kill you.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
The simple DOS kernel could be getting confused by some hardware not being at the correct location, or something else using an expected IRQ.
It is only when DOS had loaded that the Windows drivers take over.
Poke around under with /proc under Linux to see which resources are currently allocated.
This is the news for nerds I've come to know and love??? This is a tech support question... I build my own boxen, and I've had troubles in the past, but this isn't what /. is all about.
You don't say whether the install of 98 is a "real" install, or an install from a copy of another CD (ie, a copy you don't own). We can assume you own it, but think about this:
Might it not be possible that Windows 98 did some surrepticious "upgrading" during the night? Maybe IE5 asked to upgrade (I have seen this happen several times), and you said "sure, why not" - and that upgrade added a bit of code to cause Windows 98 to verify that it was a legal copy with M$'s servers. Or maybe it checked to see if you had Linux installed in another partition (somehow). Then, if either of these tests failed, it refuses to boot up (or maybe it erased part of itself to cause the bootup to fail, or something similar).
Now, more than likely, this is not the case - I would look into all the other suggestions first. However, given the way M$ has been acting lately, and given all of the other crap we have seen in the recent past with companies ROUTINELY violating peoples rights and machines, can you really blame me for thinking this?
I say you tell M$ where to stick it, and nuke the partition to allow your Linux one room to grow (unless you have some dire need on the M$ side, that isn't or can't be replicated to some extent on the Linux side)...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
What are the differences between running Intel and AMD? I don't mean performance differences. Are there many differences in terms of what software will run? I recently had some Fortran code that I was trying to link to some C code. Running under FreeBSD on an Intel box it worked fine. On an AMD Athlon some floating point flags were set on returning from the Fortran code and the next floating point operation threw a SIGFPE. Should there ever be a difference between the two platforms like that?
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-- SIGFPE
#2. Try FDISK
#3. If you have backups elsewhere... download this and run it from the DOS prompt on a WIN98 (or DOS 5.0 for that matter) boot disk, it will ERASE the boot sector, completely. (Killing Linux along the way) zap_part.exe. The source code is in the same directory in TP 7. The password is "amber". Be VERY careful. I wrote this program to remove NT installs.
--Mike--
Your right AC in that he did say he tried another drive - though he doesn't say whether it was the only drive in the system (though more than likely it was).
/. if this was taken wrong.
I am sure that what I sugested wasn't the case, and I wasn't tring to stir the pot (ok, maybe I was a little - my paranoia gear just kicked in, is all). I appologise to all on
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon