Cannot boot ReactOS.

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ShinIori319
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:15 pm

Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by ShinIori319 »

Hello. I've just installed ReactOS. Since I don't want to move my main Windows partition as it would be too risky, and don't want my Windows boot manager overwritten, I've decided to install it on a secondary partition, setting it as my active partition temporarily. I manage to go through the text-mode setup with no problems, and I install the boot manager via VBR only. After that, I've set my Windows partition back as active, and set an entry via GRUB4DOS to load FreeLdr, but when attempting to boot, I get an error message saying
Error opening freeldr.ini or file not found.\nYou need to re-install FreeLoader.
Is there any way to fix this without having to change my boot settings?
kingnothing
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri May 17, 2013 10:08 am

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by kingnothing »

well for now reactos can only identify one partition
so it must be the primary one
that means when ever you want to run reactos you have to disable the main partition or reinstall it on the main partition
I guess
but I am sure reactos reads only one partition
erkinalp
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Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:55 pm
Location: Izmir, TR

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by erkinalp »

Setup supports only one primary partition per disk. After installation, you can install other OSes to the different primary partitions as well. You are using GRUB, try kernel (hdm,n)/freeldr.sys for booting FreeLDR.
m is disk number:zero based
n is partition/volume number:zero based in GRUB Legacy/GRUB4DOS, one based in GRUB2
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ShinIori319
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:15 pm

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by ShinIori319 »

That's actually what I did. This is how my menu.lst looks like:

Code: Select all

title	ReactOS
root	(hd0,1)
kernel (hd0,1)/freeldr.sys
But anyways, all of my partitions are set as primary. Or do you mean I cannot boot the OS from a second partition?
Is there any other way to get it working (besides virtual machines or LiveCD)?
kingnothing
Posts: 38
Joined: Fri May 17, 2013 10:08 am

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by kingnothing »

as far as i know it can only identify the first driver
that is why i guess it cannot boot
i guess when your are trying to boot on reactos it reads the first partition leading to an error since the files area on the second partition which the system cannot read
so in order to boot reactos it must be placed on the first partition
or try modifying them in bios
other than that i dont know what to say
you can boot other systems with reactos but for reactos to boot it must be on the first promary partiton
ShinIori319
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:15 pm

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by ShinIori319 »

Well, setting it as active partition helps, but now Windows will not boot at all unless I change the active partition back!

Yet there's a new problem, the OS hangs up in the boot screen, when the progress bar gets about 3/4 full. :?
hbelusca
Developer
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Location: Zagreb, Croatia

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by hbelusca »

There is a "Debug" entry in the ROS bootloader, which can be used to see debug messages through a serial port, or the "Screen" entry which does the same, but the messages are displayed on the screen.
ShinIori319
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Jun 29, 2009 1:15 pm

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by ShinIori319 »

Well, there's a screen that reminds me of a Windows XP/Server 2003 one. The thing always stops, either in PCI.SYS or I8042PRT.sys

Also, an update: I've managed to get into the boot menu without changing active partitions by loading a virtual floppy image with FreeLoader in it through GRUB4DOS, but the OS still hangs in the boot screen by those two files I mentioned above.

There's something else I'd like to note. My computer has a Pentium D (2 cores) processor, and if I choose ACPI Multiprocessor on Setup, the OS will not start at all. (I must choose ACPI Uniprocessor). It has two SATA hard disks, and an IDE one. ROS is installed in the second partition from the IDE hard disk.

When installing ROS, I have to be quick, or else the Setup program freezes as well.
I tried the 0.3.15 release, the latest nightly, and even compiling ROS myself via RosBE, but I get the same result.
DOSGuy
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Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by DOSGuy »

Your experiment scares me a bit. At this point, I wouldn't personally try to install ROS on a hard drive that had other operating systems on it. I would install it on its own hard drive or, better yet, a testbed computer. ROS doesn't play well with partitions yet and, although its unlikely to do any damage to other hard drives if you install it on its own drive, ROS is alpha stage software, which means "use at your own risk". If you want to test out ROS's ability to install on a drive with multiple partitions, or even with other hard drives, I recommend doing so on a testbed computer where the other partitions/drives contain no data that you care about. However unlikely it may be, I would hate for anyone to discover a bug at the cost of losing important files. If you're going to run ROS in a computer with other OSes, backup everything you care about as frequently as possible. We need real hardware testers, but take every reasonable precaution when you play with alpha software.
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ImperialSpectre
Posts: 57
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Location: England, UK

Re: Cannot boot ReactOS.

Post by ImperialSpectre »

ShinIori319 wrote:Well, there's a screen that reminds me of a Windows XP/Server 2003 one. The thing always stops, either in PCI.SYS or I8042PRT.sys

Also, an update: I've managed to get into the boot menu without changing active partitions by loading a virtual floppy image with FreeLoader in it through GRUB4DOS, but the OS still hangs in the boot screen by those two files I mentioned above.

There's something else I'd like to note. My computer has a Pentium D (2 cores) processor, and if I choose ACPI Multiprocessor on Setup, the OS will not start at all. (I must choose ACPI Uniprocessor). It has two SATA hard disks, and an IDE one. ROS is installed in the second partition from the IDE hard disk.

When installing ROS, I have to be quick, or else the Setup program freezes as well.
I tried the 0.3.15 release, the latest nightly, and even compiling ROS myself via RosBE, but I get the same result.
The setup freeze issue is common on most or some modern systems, I've had setup freezes as well on both the ACPI Multiprocessor & the uniprocessor setting. My suggestion is try report it on jira.reactos.org & use oracle's virtualbox for the time being until the problem has been resolved.
ReactOS is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes
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