Interesting Situation
 

Ok, I have an old LapTop. 144 MB RAM, 150 Mhz Processor, and a 10 Gb HD. Of course, the 10 Gb HD is only functional with EZ-BIOS or some other HD controller software installed onto the MBR. Well, I've decided I would like to run Windows 98 and Linux on this machine. Here's the question:

Is there any way I can run Windows 98 and Linux without losing EZ-BIOS on my MBR - or - is there an alternate way of doing this?

(PS - This laptop ONLY has a CD-ROM...no floppy)

:scratch:

u might be able to make win98 boot with it. but for Linux, installing the LInux bootloader might mess it up.

if u can successfully use win98, google around for LOADLIN - to boot up linux.

I installed win 98 and red hat 9 on a system for friends of mine that had ez-bios installed and I used grub and it still worked.
I can't guarantee it would be the same in your case. It would be worth trying a bootloader if you don't care about losing info you already have.
It all depends on whether you have it installed yet or not.

By the way, you might wanna check out College Linux - it's fairly new, only one and I really like it. If your drive is clear on the laptop, give it a shot, it's only one is to download and a very easy install. I wrote a guide on it too (just started) you can get to it on the first page of my regular guide - link is below in my sig.

BTW, I wrote you a msg in the thread about the girl changing her permissions about my red hat 7.3 and 8 experience. Check it out.

You may also want to look into the use of the FDISK command. I'm sure that you can save the information there to a floppy or something.

You could go the loadlin method, and set windows to only load in msdos mode first, then you get to windows by typing windows, and into linux by using the loadlin command.

HTH

Alex

p.s. yowwww I don't suppose you have something to do with that college linux thing do you? you've mentioned it a faird bit.......

OK....where do I install GRUB though? If I put it on the MBR I can kiss my EZ-BIOS goodbye. Do I put it on the first sector of the partition? Or was I wrong with the MBR situation?

BTW, I like 7.3 and won't change for a while. All my crap works and I put way too much work into it to change versions now.

Just a thought, I could have it where win98 starts to boot, but in the autoexec.bat file have a batch menu to choose linux or windows 98. Then if I choose linux, I could have the batch file execute loadlin for me. Does anyone see any potential problems to that?