I have a problem

[ivan]

My problem should be simple to solve but it isn't.

Some information, I have a data logger that I access once a month and it is causing the problem.  The software for the data logger is windows only and I have a dedicated windows 7 computer for it.  What I want to do is add another hard disk to my Ryzen third gen processor based ArcaOS computer and scrap the win 7 box.

The problem is what do I use to dual boot the Ryzen box, especially then Air-boot only causes an error message on any of my 1920x1200 monitors? The error shown is a moving box saying 'incorrect video resolution', so there is no way I can select the win7 install.

Any thoughts would be most helpful.

[Dave Yeo]

That's weird. Does it happen instantly when you turn the monitor on? It should be standard VGA that Air Boot uses.
Do you have many partitions? If not it wouldn't be too hard to use it blind. If so, could you temporarily use a video card or a different monitor to set up Air Boot and learn where the partitions are to use it blind?
I guess currently OS/2 is installed on C: so no Air Boot. What about using the BIOS to change the boot order? Most have menu for boot order where you could choose HD0, HD1 etc as well as USB, network, CDRom and such.

[Tom]

The problem is what do I use to dual boot the Ryzen box, especially then Air-boot only causes an error message on any of my 1920x1200 monitors? The error shown is a moving box saying 'incorrect video resolution', so there is no way I can select the win7 install.

This rings a bell, but I am not sure if I remember the details correctly. And I also don't remember if this bug in Airboot showed up in the eCS days or in the AOS era. It had something to do with a missing call to correctly set the video mode in Airboot (the venerable IBM Bootmanager did this correctly). I believe Steven Levine was involved in solving the mystery. If this was fixed in Airboot, then I don't remember in which version. Which version of Airboot are you using?

It should be possible to start another OS on another partition directly, bypassing a bootmanager like the IBM Bootmanager or Airboot. This can be achieved from a command line using the command setboot.exe . Run this command to see the possible options, or check the Command Reference.

Do I understand you correctly that you cannot boot from Airboot at all because of this problem with the video mode?

[Pete]

Hi ivan

I seem to recall that win7 includes a bootmanager - not sure if it can only boot windows volumes though...  This may be of help  https://southjerseytechies.net/blog/modifying-the-windows-7-boot-loader-with-the-boot-configuration-data-editor-tool/


Regards

Pete

[ivan]

Thanks guys.

One thing I forgot to mention is that all the monitors are HDMI and I feed them from the HDMI port on the MSI B550-A PRO board which is driven by the on processor video.

@Dave, yes this is what I see at startup directly after the UEFI boot logo.  There is only one partition marked as active startable on the SSD and the 2.5inch win 7 disk.

@Tom,  that is what it appears to be although just how much influence using the HDMI port has I don't know.  As to the version of Air-boot, I assume there must be a way of finding out from the program code.

@Pete, I'll look into that but I seem to remember it is for booting different versions/configurations of windows.

At the moment I do have a way of selecting which OS to boot but that entails entering the UEFI bios at start, selecting advanced mode, then selecting 'boot options', selecting the M2_1 (for ArcaOS) or the 2.5inch disk (for win 7), then saving settings and rebooting.  Not the easiest path but doable just once a month.

Maybe I should dig out my old CD of Warp 4 and try using Boot Manager, I do have 4 SATA slots available for extra disks to allow experiments.
 

[Andi B.]

The error shown is a moving box saying 'incorrect video resolution',

To make it clear this is a message box coming from the monitor which does not like to show the video signal that is offered to it.

One thing I forgot to mention is that all the monitors are HDMI a

This is an important information in this context. Unfortunately I don't know which resolutions are mandatory with HDMI (guess 720p is one of them, and some other television standards, could be that there is not a single computer resolution mandatory with HDMI cause HDMI was invented for consumer/television market, not computers. So it's up to your specific monitor which resolution it likes or not).

F.i. with DVI 640x480 at 60Hz is mandatory. There seems to be other resolutions are supported by most monitors even when connected via HDMI as modern BIOSes often uses higher resolutions. Guess AirBoot uses 800x600 (it's a guess) which is very well supported by computers (DVI, DisplayPort) but maybe not well supported by monitors connected by HDMI. But could also be that modern BIOSes checks the resolutions the connected monitor offers (via DDC and EDID info) and uses one of the supported ones. This is probably not possible with AirBoot given the limited code space I fear.

Things to check -
- what resolutions does your monitor support via the connector you choose (HDMI in your case)
- what resolution uses current AirBoot
- what resolutions are supported by the majority of monitors out there even when connected via HDMI
Based on that you can kindly ask the AirBoot author to check if he can use better resolution.

Another option would be using a more proper connection method (DP or DVI) and see if that helps.

Btw. the topic you choose is not very specific.

[Tom]

@Tom,  that is what it appears to be although just how much influence using the HDMI port has I don't know.  As to the version of Air-boot, I assume there must be a way of finding out from the program code.

Just use a command prompt and type airboot2 to start the Airboot installer. The output tells you the version that is in use.

[Neil Waldhauer]

If you are booting Windows on UEFI, then there really isn't a solution that will work. When ArcaOS 5.1 comes out with UEFI support, then pretty much any UEFI boot manager will work.

AirBoot is a BIOS-based boot manager, as is the IBM boot manager. It would be nice if someone would make a UEFI boot manager that communicated with BIOS to support a BIOS boot manager and give us a boot manager that could boot either type of OS.

[ivan]

Thanks everyone.

It looks as if I go back to having two computers.  Maybe I should look for a very small AMD processor based unit to read the data logger and then connect it to my main 28inch monitor via an HDMI USB KVM switch similar to how I run my Linux boxes.

[Dave Yeo]

As Neil said, wait for AOS 5.1, install in UEFI mode and use a graphical bootmanager. I use rEFInd for UEFI, works well, graphical so should work for you.

[Alex Taylor]

I have the same motherboard. However, I'm using a CPU (not an APU), so I'm not using onboard video support. Instead I'm using a PCIe Radeon RX550 GPU video card. Perhaps that may be relevant?

Here, Air-Boot works OK in CSM mode... with one exception, that being that it doesn't recognize the NVMe disk but only the SATA drives.