Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum support by BIOS

Submitted by Mr Malloc on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 16:52. Dual- and Multi-booting
Posts: 1

My computer (its a Dell Optiplex GX300 from 2000) is set up as follows:

hda: Microsoft Windows 2000: boots fine
hdb: Linux Debian: boots fine
hdd: Linux MEPIS: installed, but won't boot. Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum support by BIOS.

I'm looking for a solution that will enable me to succcessfully boot MEPIS from hdd (my third hard drive).

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

» login or register to post comments

have a look at this

Submitted by drlizau on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 17:19.
Posts: 4864

it refers to a thinkpad, but may be very relevant
http://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2006/03/grub-error-18-when-installing-suse-10_06.htm

Quote:

After trying various pre-desktop area BIOS settings I noticed that the amount of disk space available to SUSE varied between 34.2GB in secure mode and 37.2GB in normal mode. It seems that even with the normal selection in BIOS, SUSE setup had been able to detect the full disk, and had installed the kernel on a section of the disk reserved for the pre-desktop area (which was then unavailable at boot time - causing the GRUB error).

In summary, if installing SUSE (or any operating system I guess) on a ThinkPad, set the predesktop area to secure before commencing installation - Sharad Popli has more information about this in his SUSE Linux, WinXP and Access IBM on the ThinkPad T43 article. I now have SUSE installed, but have a corrupt HPA. Thankfully my PC is still under warranty so Lenovo are sending me some recovery CDs without charge (my experience of their technical support has been excellent).

This forum has a working solution
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/installation/49437-grub-error-18-a.html

» login or register to post comments

Search

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum support by BIOS

have a look at this

Comment viewing options