hdt sees the disk and partitions in both versions of grml. The OS doesn't see them.  I was able to run gparted on ver 9 but ver 5 did not have gparted. gparted did not see the disk per my experience without the pci=nomsi boot option -> which did not work for ver 5 either. ver 5 still wants to mount /dev/sda5 which is my first fat32 partition on the hdd.

>> 1. Does an older grml version work for you?
> This is the first version I have seen. Searched for others but not obvious.

Just download version 2009.05 from one of the mirrors listed at
http://grml.org/download/

Downloaded medium grml64. There was a keyboard mapping problem on ver 5 when choosing "us" kyb and the "-" key?????

>> 2. Does adding bootoptions 'noapic nolapic' change anything?

> noapic boots; but with pci=nomsi fails because "cd" mount on /dev/sda5.

> nolapic doesn't boot with "cd" mount on /dev/loop0; same with
> pci=nomsi. I don't see the timeout errors for nolapic option with
> either.
[...]
>  With "pci=nomsi" anywhere grml mounts /dev/sda5 instead of
>  /dev/sr0 and fails the boot.

Please try booting with additional 'bootfrom=removable' bootoption.
Seems like your /dev/sda5 looks like a partition containing
information/files relevant for a live-system. /dev/sda5 is a fat32 partition that I use for joint windows/linux use.

Using the options: 'bootfrom=removable and pci=nomsi' -> sees the HDD and I can now load grml to a partition which I will be trying later today.

Thanks for all the help. 

Stephen J. Ingle
Single Edition Consulting LLC
Managing Member
336-449-9114(W)
336-263-2792(C)

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