Boot problems after removing harddrive

[Cole]

Hi,

After taking out my second hard drive (/dev/hdb) from my computer, FC5 is hanging during boot up at the "probing for new hardware" stage when I switch on my computer. If I then press reset, it passes this point then pauses for a long time when the HAL daemon is starting. HAL does start eventually and then FC5 boots successfully but this is very annoying.

Can anyone tell me how to solve this problem?

(XP is booting fine and the BIOS shows the correct IDE information.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[Seve]

Hello:
This is what I would try in the following order.
[Others may have better suggestions, which hopefully they can supply ]:)

First, check you fstab for any manually entered lingering entries related to the disk, which you may or may not have entered there. If any are present, comment them out or delete the entry. If nothing is there, then move on to the next step.

Enter your BIOS and change the settings to Set Up Defaults and or Fail Safe Defaults [whatever the choice you have is] save, exit and reboot and see if that helps.

If it does not, then reset you CMOS via the motherboard jumper. Reboot and see if that helps.

If that does not work for you then Pop out the CMOS battery for 10 minutes or so and replace it and reboot.

If none of the above work then boot from your FC install disc and type linux rescue and follow long {do not need network} at the last prompt type
chroot /mnt/sysimage
then do a fdisk -l to locate where you want grub installed, your target in this example is /dev/hdX
then re-install grub
grub-install --recheck /dev/hdX
this will create a new grub, probe all the devices and create a new /boot/grub/device.map which represents your new hardware layout

type exit, enter, exit and reboot and all should be well

Seve

[Cole]

Thanks Seve for your help.

My /etc/fstab file is fine because the partitions on /dev/hdb are not mounted at boot but I did comment them out anyway.

After some trial and error changing bios settings, I've finally come to a configuration which allows FC5 to boot properly.

Thanks again.

[nick.stumpos]

you could turn kudzu off so it wont probe for new hardware.
chkconfig kudzu off