multiboot mixed ide/scsi on machine with no scsi boot order support

[Michael Grigoni]

Greetings:

We're wrestling with a Compaq Deskpro EN that has no bios support for
boot order including scsi. We need the option to boot NT or Win2k from
either the IDE drive or the drive on scsi id 0 and to have access to
all drives from either OS (they're all NTFS).
For our first attempt we have the scsi controller bios enabled; on
powerup the drive on id 0 is assigned drive letter 'd:' and of course
the ide drive is drive 'c:' We put the win2k ntldr on the IDE drive and
made boot.ini:

multi(0)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)/WINNT="NT4 on IDE 0"
multi(1)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)/WINNT'"Win2k Server on SCSI 0"

Boot fails on selecting SCSI 0: "Windows 2000 could not start because of
a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the
selected boot disk."

Do we need to disable the scsi bios and use a scsi driver and change the
second 'multi' line to 'scsi'? Or is this a drive letter issue in the
Win2k configuration which can't be practically solved?

Searching the archives reveals other's with similar circumstances and
no posted solutions.

All replies much appreciated

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum

 

[Bob Holmes]

Hi Michael
I might be wrong but i believe if you mix SCSI and IDE
your IDE becomes the only bootable partitions of your
Harddrive array. The SCSI areas are only able to store
data and run programs at this point. It would be wise to
lose the IDE for the mear faq that SCSI is better.
thats my two cents worth....
-=Bob

 

[Eric Gisin]

Your system will boot ntldr from IDE only. You can put the OS on any drive,
though.

If you tell setup to install to SCSI is will add the following to boot.ini;

multi(0)rdisk(1)disk(0)partition(1)

Multi(1) was only used in NT 31.

| Greetings:
|
| We're wrestling with a Compaq Deskpro EN that has no bios support for
| boot order including scsi. We need the option to boot NT or Win2k from
| either the IDE drive or the drive on scsi id 0 and to have access to
| all drives from either OS (they're all NTFS).
| For our first attempt we have the scsi controller bios enabled; on
| powerup the drive on id 0 is assigned drive letter 'd:' and of course
| the ide drive is drive 'c:' We put the win2k ntldr on the IDE drive and
| made boot.ini:
|
| multi(0)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)/WINNT="NT4 on IDE 0"
| multi(1)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)/WINNT'"Win2k Server on SCSI 0"
|
| Boot fails on selecting SCSI 0: "Windows 2000 could not start because of
| a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the
| selected boot disk."
|
| Do we need to disable the scsi bios and use a scsi driver and change the
| second 'multi' line to 'scsi'? Or is this a drive letter issue in the
| Win2k configuration which can't be practically solved?
|
| Searching the archives reveals other's with similar circumstances and
| no posted solutions.
|

 

[msg]

Rather than battling with this I was able to find a Microid Research
BIOS (MR BIOS) for the problem motherboard which then added IDE/SCSI
boot order features.

Thanks to the respondents