Trouble after dual-boot install (Grub, hardware detection)

[FlorianK]

Newbie here - I sincerely apologise if all this is covered in older posts, I did search and couldn't find anything that would help me with this particular problem.

My system is now XP (23GB); Knoppix Debian (c. 3.5GB), Linux swap partition (500MB), Shared FAT32 (1GB), with GRUB as a bootloader integrated (if that's the word) into my NTbootloader.

Following the Debian install (using knoppix-installer), GRUB worked fine for a while but now doesn't after I followed the advice here to get the Knoppix hardware detection for the Debian system.

(In brief

As root in a console window /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig to setup the alsa devices then edit the file /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh and put the line aumix -w 75 -v 75 at the bottom of the file for the volume to be set at boot time. For the network card make sure the file /etc/network/interfaces looks like this:

Code:

# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(, ifdown(

# The loopback interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The first network card - this entry was created during the Debian installation
# (network, broadcast and gateway are optional)
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp



Then /etc/init.d/networking restart to re-start the network with the new settings. You may still need the noapic in the GRUB config but I can't be much help there never use it.

Grub is in my boot menu, but if I select it, the box just boots up again as if from scratch. I've tried running the W32Grub.exe (or whatever) again, to no avail. The menu.lst is as follows:

# Sample boot menu configuration file
#

# Boot automatically after half a minute.
timeout 30

# By default, boot the second entry.
default 1

# Fallback to the first entry.
fallback 0

title Windows XP
unhide (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

# For booting Linux
title Debian
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz
initrd /boot/initrd.gz

But probably the fault actually comes before the menu.lst is even read - if I select GRUB from the NTbootloader, the screen goes blank, there's a brief flash with writing on the screen (I could make out "something Stage 2 something"), then the machine reboots again to the NTbootloader.
So for the moment, I can't get into my Debian, but I'm suspecting that even if I could, the network, sound and printer might still not be running - if you could offer advice on that, I'd be very grateful indeed. In a nutshell, what would I have to do to use the CD boot configuration (with the great hardware detection) for my hd install? The post that I've linked above seems to be about that topic, but I'm afraid there's too much tech-Greek in it for me. And I couldn't find the answer in the docs - many posts say to look there, and I'm sorry if I'm just too dumb to find it. Is it absolutely wrong to suspect that there might be a configuration file that (CD-)Knoppix creates and which I could just copy (from CD boot) to the right place, and then everything would work?

EDIT - There's more about GRUB that I forgot to write. It appears that GRUB doesn't really work if I want to switch OSes by rebooting - both from Linux and Win. I always have to (well, had to - now things are much clearer because GRUB doesn't work at all) switch off the machine entirely. Does anybody have experience with that?

EDIT2 - So apparently nobody's going to answer this one; supposedly because I've missed some post that says how to do it. I couldn't find it in the docs, nor on the forum ... it's kind of hard to find the right search keys for this problem. Could anyone be so kind as to point me to an answer, if there is one? Otherwise, I can only boot from CD and reinstall the whole thing, this time Knoppix style. Could anyone just post whether this is my only option - "yes" or "no" will do, but please hep!!!

[FlorianK]

Found the reason you didn't answer. I'm adding this because I don't know how to delete a post.
Grub problem: apparently unsolveable.
Hardware detection: I'll go for a Knoppix style re-install.