Old box, new install, Grub fails error 18

David Woyciesjes woyciesjes at sbcglobal.net
Thu May 12 16:30:35 UTC 2005


harryc wrote:
> From the 'Warty' install notes. Hoary should be similar - 
> 
> "== Older computers with large hard disks (GRUB Error '18') ==
> 
> Some older computers have a BIOS that can only access the first part of
> a large hard disk.  These computers may not work with the default disk
> setup from the Warty installer.
> 
> The GRUB bootloader, once it is completely started up, does not use the
> BIOS and can access the entire hard disk.  But if some of the GRUB files
> happen to be in the part of the hard disk that the BIOS cannot access,
> then GRUB will not be able to completely start up.  When this problem
> happens, GRUB will print the message "Error 18" and the computer will
> not boot up.
> 
> To sucessfully install Warty on a computer with this problem, you must
> manually partition the hard disk, and create a special partition where
> GRUB and the boot kernel images will go.  This special partition must
> be at the beginning of the hard disk, to make sure that the BIOS can
> access it.  It can be a very small partition; 32 MB is a good size.  It
> must be mounted as "/boot".  Once you have the "/boot" partition
> created, partition the rest of the disk as you like."
> 

	I had a problem with Grub when I tried to install Hoary on my Thinkpad 
iSeries 1200... Don't recall the exact error number, but it was 
something like that. I got around it by installing in the expert mode, 
and using LILO instead.

-- 
---   Dave Woyciesjes
---   ICQ# 905818





More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list