Bad PBR sig and dual booting with Windows

Question

This site's menu config is too difficult for me...
fyi.
=>
Below is the cases that happened in my environment
when installing Solaris 8 Operating Environment, Intel Platform Edition
Some will help you, and some may be just for your thinking.
Bad PBR sig
You know what it means?
I don't know.
If you know, let me know please...
@ Case 1
My Seagate ST39236LW 9.2GB HARD DISK fdisk info
Total disk size is 14342 cylinders
Cylinder size is 1251 (512 byte) blocks
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== ===
1 IFS:NTFS 0 7165 7166 50
2 Active x86 boot 7166 7182 17 0
3 Solaris 7183 14341 7159 50
(I use cylinder number to partition hard disk. Why?
When I use % and insert 1% to partition 2 then
fdisk makes start cylinder 7155.
It overlays with partition 1's end cylinder number.
So fdisk save(menu no 4) fails...
because the partition 1's start cylinder number is 0 ?)
After rebooting, bizarre Bad PBR sig, and my system dies...
So I boots my PC with Windows(or Dos) booting diskette.
A> fdisk
First Hard Disk partition info
1 NTFS 4377 50%
2 NON-DOS 10 0%
3 A NON-DOS 10 0% <= Solaris created x86 boot
4 NON-DOS 4363 0%
Solaris created extra X86 boot partition 3 and made it active.
But partition 3 could not boot...
I made partition 2 active from dos fdisk menu,
and pc boots well.
After rebooting, my disk partition info is like this
Total disk size is 14342 cylinders
Cylinder size is 1251 (512 byte) blocks
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== ===
1 IFS:NTFS 0 7165 7166 50
2 Active x86 boot 7166 7182 17 0
3 x86 boot 7183 7199 17 0
4 Solaris 7200 14341 7142 50
Then after installation?
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== ===
1 IFS:NTFS 0 7165 7166 50
2 Active x86 boot 7165 7181 17 0
3 Solaris 7200 14341 7142 50
Partition 2 and 3 changed...
Where did partition 3 go???
Just deleted?
Then why partition 2 Start cylinder changed?
@ Case 2.
Another queer thing....
Total disk size is 14342 cylinders
Cylinder size is 1251 (512 byte) blocks
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== ===
1 IFS:NTFS 0 7165 7166 50
2 Active Solaris 7166 14341 7176 50
In Solaris x86 format fdisk menu,
if I've allocated remaining disk space all to Solaris(without x86 boot),
then Solaris also makes x86 boot partition(size 10MB), reboots well.
But install fails due to not enough free disk space
when install begins slicing Solaris partition.
error log says
Installing 32 Bit Solaris Packages
- Configuring boot device
- Using disk(c0t0d0) for "rootdisk"
- Deleting x86 boot fdisk partition (c0t0d0)
- Creating x86 boot fdisk partition (c0t0d0)
ERROR:Not enough free space to create x86 Boot fdisk partition(c0t0d0)
Why does Solaris delete and create x86 boot partition?
Why did it exist?
Case 3.
If I've fdisked like this, what will happen???
Total disk size is 14342 cylinders
Cylinder size is 1251 (512 byte) blocks
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== ===
1

Answer 1

BAD PBR SIG message comes from your BIOS - no partition boot record.
Sorry but it's not clear what else is going on - might be worth running a ODS based fdisk to clear the disk before installing Solaris?