Jeff-

It doesn't appear that there was anything wrong with your initial
partitioning scheme, although I've never tried to create a fat partition with
a linux partitioning tool, and there is a limit of 4 primary partitions on a
disk - looks like you have 5 partitions, that could cause problems if the
wrong ones are extended (root, swap, and the windows bootable partition
should not be within an extended (or logical) partition).  Typcially the
message you were getting from the kernel "Cannot open Root Device .." is most
often caused by an incorrect configuration of lilo.  It's looking for / on
the wrong device.

The error you are getting from your CMOS could be the problem.  As
suggested, a battery replacement may help.  What type and how old is the
mother board you have?  There could be an issue with the size of the drive.
Did it ever work?  A BIOS update could help as well.

If that doesn't turn out to be the problem, you can look for a utiltiy that
will write zeros to your drive and try to partition the drive from scratch.
I'd be surprised if IBM doesn't have such a thing.

I'd make sure that your board and drive are both functioning properly
together before tackling the OS problem.

Eric Wertman


On Monday 23 April 2001 11:39 pm, you wrote:
> Hi Eric,
>
> That's consoling.  I used the diskdrake to partion the drive. The first
> partion is Root / which acts as the mount point for the other partitions.
> The second is the Swap partition, the third is /usr , forth is /home.
> I then created a windows partition on the rest of the drive or at least I
> thought I did.
>
> This gets really messy now. Since then I tried to reinstall ME. I used
> fdisk and tried to get rid of the linux partions/ .  I used a rescue disk I
> created on another computer with ME. When the A:> prompt came up I type in
> fdisk / mbr then went back to try and reinstall ME It's telling me it
> cannot create a temporary C:/ drive to install ME with. The disk format is
> not recognized.
> I tried a rescue disk I made during the Mandrake istall and now I get the
> message that there is now operating system.
> I think that's about it.  I appreciate any help
>
> Jeff Greene
>
> Eric Wertman wrote:
> > Hello-
> >
> > Your drive is not toast.  How did you partition the drive?  Without
> > knowing the specifics, you can at least use DOS fdisk to delete the
> > non-dos partitions.  If you can explain a little more about what you did
> > with the install I can give you more info.
> >
> > Eric Wertman
> >
> > > The error message I get when loading linux:
> > > "VFS: Cannot open Root Device 16:01
> > > Kernel Panic: VFS:Unable to mount Root Fs on 16:01"
> > >
> > > I've tried everything. including reinstalling windows,
> > > rebooting with the emergencie boot disk, installing
> > > different version of Linux, which did install but on
> > > a partition after the first install. I can't get to
> > > any to any kind of prompts so I can unistall.
> > > Any suggestions or is my new 75gig ibm toast?

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