Boot to Hard Disk

[slaxlax]

I'm trying to boot to the hard disk using UBCD on a usb stick but every time I try it just says "Booting..." and then never goes anywhere. Any idea why this would be?
Also, how do you know the partition labels? Default is hd0 is first hard disk and hd2 is second hard disk but what if I have more partitions or this is incorrect for my hard disk set up?

Thanks!

[Icecube]

I'm trying to boot to the hard disk using UBCD on a usb stick but every time I try it just says "Booting..." and then never goes anywhere. Any idea why this would be?

Syslinux/isolinux (chain.c32) can only chainload the mbr of a hard drive. It can't load the bootcode that is stored in the first sector of a partition (the mbr of the hard disk has to load this code). So can you boot from this hard disk directly (without other bootloaders, like grub)?

Also, how do you know the partition labels?

You can't use partition labels with chain.c32. It only can load the mbr for you
. Try Smart bootmanager or GAG to boot from a partition that you want instead.

[slaxlax]

Yea I am able to boot to the hard drive if I start it up to boot to that... what I am looking for is a way to boot the hard drive after the computer has already booted the USB. Or in otherwords if the system tries to boot off of the USB I want the USB just to pass and have the system start booting from the hard drive instead.

Thanks

[Icecube]

Normally you method should work.

Try the following options in your main.cfg

Code: Select all

LABEL boothdd0
    MENU LABEL *Boot First Hard Disk
    KERNEL chain.c32
    APPEND hd0
LABEL boothdd1
    MENU LABEL *Boot First Hard Disk (second way)
    KERNEL chain.c32
    APPEND hd1
LABEL boothdd2
    MENU LABEL *Boot First Hard Disk third way)
    KERNEL chain.c32
    APPEND hd2
LABEL boothdd3
    MENU LABEL *Boot First Hard Disk fourth way)
    KERNEL chain.c32
    APPEND hd3

Do you have a card reader in your pc that maybe get listed before your hard drive?

[slaxlax]

No I don't have any card readers or anything like that.. I tried the way you suggested but still no success.. The first two (hd0 hd1) will get a booting label ( print "Booting...") and then it just hangs there. The rest of them just say that it is not a valid boot disk.

[Icecube]

Replace chain.c32 in /isolinux and /syslinux with the new version form the syslinux archive.
Download syslinux from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/.
Extract the syslinux archive to "c:\syslinux\".

You can also update the other isolinux/syslinux files (not necessary for your problem want but they are better or should be better).
To update isolinux for the CD version
- Copy "c:\syslinux\isolinux.bin" to "c:\ubcd\isolinux\".
- Copy "c:\syslinux\com32\menu\menu.c32" to "c:\ubcd\isolinux\"
- Copy "c:\syslinux\com32\modules\chain.c32" to "c:\ubcd\isolinux\"
- Copy "c:\syslinux\memdisk\memdisk" to "c:\ubcd\isolinux\"

To update syslinux for the bootable USB key
- Copy "c:\syslinux\ldlinux.sys" to "c:\ubcd\syslinux\".
- Copy "c:\syslinux\mbr\mbr.bin" and "c:\syslinux\ldloader.bss" to "c:\ubcd\tools\ubcd2usb\".
- Copy "c:\syslinux\com32\menu\menu.c32" to "c:\ubcd\syslinux\"
- Copy "c:\syslinux\com32\modules\chain.c32" to "c:\ubcd\syslinux\"
- Copy "c:\syslinux\memdisk\memdisk" to "c:\ubcd\syslinux\"

I am not sure if the paths in this tutorial are still correct, I made this tutorial for another version of syslinux.

Version 3.70 of syslinux contains a lot of improvements of chain.c32

* chain.c32: option "swap" to support swapping of BIOS drive numbers. This is necessary to boot certain operating systems (DOS, Windows) from a secondary drive.
* chain.c32: option "file=" to support loading a boot file from the SYSLINUX filesystem instead of loading the boot sector from the drive.
* chain.c32: option "seg=" to control the load location.
* chain.c32: option "ntldr=" as a shorthand for "seg=0x2000 file="; use this to load one of WinNT's loaders:

chain.c32 hd0 1 ntldr=/MiniNT/setupldr.bin

Note that the file needs to be in the SYSLINUX filesystem.

* chain.32: options "freedos=" and "msdos="/"pcdos=" as shorthands for "seg=0x60 file=" and "seg=0x70 file=" respectively; use this to load FreeDOS's kernel.sys, MS-DOS's io.sys or PC-DOS's ibmbio.sys.
* chain.c32: support "boot" as the drive specification, indicating the drive from which it was booted (for syslinux/extlinux).
* SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX: support "localboot" with the same feature set as ISOLINUX.
* chain.c32: fix booting from logical partitions (Sergey Vlasov.)

You can also try the last beta of ubcd5, which has the last syslinux files already.

The syslinux site:
http://syslinux.zytor.com