sarge installation causes BIOS to freeze on harddisk detection
I am trying to install the latest Debian sarge distribution (2004-12-04) on
a Gateway E-4100 computer (P4 2.8GHz, 512 DDR, 60 GB Maxtor IDE Drive, 16x
Liteon DVD, 100MB LAN). Pretty standard configuration.
The base installation goes smooth,
- kernel 2.6
- partition the disk in root and swap, use ext3
- for boot loader I tried both LILO and GRUB
Now the problem comes after the reboot when I should boot into Linux. The
system freezes on BIOS startup when it detects the hard drive. In order to
be able boot I have to (I know it's criminal!) pull the power suply from the
disk, boot successfully from the DVD and then plug the power supply for the
disk back.
Then I would repeat the installation, try some other things (the disk is
detected and formatted properly) and when it comes to rebooting the BIOS
would freeze again.
I also tried another new hard drive. Before the installation touches the
drive the system boots OK. But after the base installation (which formats
the drive) the BIOS just hangs on hard drive detection.
When it freezes I cannot even enter the BIOS setup or boot from another
device. This led me into thinking that the freeze is caused by the drive
detection.
Now the big question: How could the installer affect the hard drive in such
a way that it freezes the BIOS? Even if it messes up the MBR and all the
partitions, I should still be able to get into the BIOS setup, right?
Your help is dearly appreciated,
Bogdan Calmac.
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