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Then installing Windoze creating your partitions or whatever with that & letting it write over the mbr, at least when you want linux you just leave the disk in.
I always seem to have problems installing Red Hat with Windoze already installed as it writes over the mbr and I have to put it back in the boot record. Thats why I use a boot disk all the time.
A Windows install WILL overwrite the MBR, guaranteed.
All you can do is confirm you are able to boot Linux VIA floppy or CD and rewirite Lilo or Grub afterwards. Or choose to use the Windows bootloader instead (check Google).
Good Luck.
I have had this problem (running a windows [re]install after Linux is already in place in a dual boot environment) and it did indeed snatch GRUB right out of the MBR and put it's windows bootstrap loader crap (with no option to boot Linux, only Windows) in its place.
I ended up getting sick of booting off a floppy and reinstalled Linux after backing up my info.
You make it sound so easy. How can you reinstall grub? (Don't really care about lilo since I don't use it =P)
I use Lilo.
To reinstall Lilo to the MBR you just run /sbin/lilo as root, and your current configuration is restored to the MBR.
I assume grub is much the same but do not know specifics.
Basically you just need to be able to boot into your Linux system and run (configure as needed) your bootloader program.
(Check 'man grub'??)
I got a question which is simular to the above problem, be it that if I try to reinstall W2K on the first partition, the (Grub) bootloader pops up after Win setup has finished copying files (and has to restart ). Normally setup would continue, but now I can choose between RH8 and the broken W2K installation I'm trying to fix.
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). Normally setup would continue, but now I can choose between RH8 and the broken W2K installation I'm trying to fix.
