rite so i installed mandrake last week and i restarted. i choose windows from the mandrake boot screen and its like "NTLDR IS MISSING" and im like "oh shit" so like after messing around with it trying to recover windows i reinstalled it, and deleted the mandrake partition and swap... so its been a week and i got windows back up with everything i had installed heh, and i wanna try mandrake again but im so fucking scared of like installing over the boot sector or watever the hell i did before. also with mandrake, i couldnt get my cable modem online! i was using KDE and i configed it and everything in the menus and it still wouldnt go online, any help? surfboard motorola modem btw, on eth device 0 or watever, THANKS!

is their a boot file in win2k? i cant find boot.ini in win2k is it called something else? can i edit the boot sector? like to tell it wat to boot and stuff? think i can use partitionmagic boot program thingy? sorry about all the questions and stuff lol

To answer your question, yes, the boot sector is rewriteable/fixable. If you can boot into Linux, you can edit your lilo.conf or grub.conf files to what's actually correct, then rerun lilo/grub to fix your boot sector. (If you can't get into linux, either, a good boot disk along the lines of tomsrtbt will help.)
Make sure you know where your Windows partition is before doing editing the config file - i.e. /dev/hda?. Running fdisk /dev/hda, and entering 'p' (for print) ('q' is quit) will tell you the configuration of your hard drive, and you should be able to tell by the partition sizes which partition is which.
Some searching around google and here will p'bly show up some examples of the lilo/grub.conf file formats, too

-Laura

Alright... as far as I understand, there's two stages to the boot process. The initial stage involves the Master Boot Record. That's what Lilo and Grub play around with, and that's what FIXMBR fixes. If your computer turns on, the BIOS loads, and then your problems start right after that, it's probably an MBR problem.

If, however, you get to Lilo or Grub, or whatever, and an Operating System (be it Linux or Windows) can START loading (even if there's an error) then it's probably not an MBR error. If you get an error when Windows attempts to load, then this is a Windows boot error.

I know with XP, you can boot from the CD, go into the recover console and there are a couple utils to fix your Windows boot settings.

I would try the following commands:
fixboot

and if that doesn't solve the problem
bootcfg (or something similar to that) /rebuild

Similar commands should exist for 2K...


JL

rApT0r: I can't help you with your boot sector thing, but for getting online, did you set ur eth0 to dhcp?

You get 'ntldr is missing' because of changes in partitions, not because of the windows bootloader being overwritten.

Its possible that if he used Partition Magic to partition the drive that the windows partition could have been set as Hidden... And files on a hidden drive cannot be "found". This happened to me. Try booting with the Partition Magic boot disks.. (you should have made them during the PM setup). From the Partition Magic gui you can "unhide" the windows partition.

Oracl3: ya using the mandrake 10 internet config thingy under KDE, i set it to use DHCP to get ip, host, and everything and it still didnt go online :-( ill try it again when i install again

ya its weird, once i got to the boot screen i pressed windows and RIGHT away its like NTLDR is missing, it didnt even start loading! i NOW have partition boot disks lol i didnt before... damn... ok well ill install mandrake maybe this weekend if i get the balls 2 do it cuz im SO scared of not being able to load windows again oh man. if anyone else can help me not get this error again please post! thanks

btw if u can, please explain how i should partition my HDD's so i dont get the error agan this weekend, i have a 60 gb and a 120 gb, 120 being master, rite now i have the partitions setup like this for the 120GB (according to partition magic)

120GB total:
C: NTFS 17GB active primary

*extended 96 GB primary
F: NTFS 14GB logical
unallolocated 82GB logical

(f and unallocated are like 'part' of the extended 96GB, i dunno why, stupid win2k setup did it when it partitioned)

the 60GB is used to hold my crap

btw windows is installed on F:, dont ask me why, win2k did it lol

If you can't get it to work editing your LILO, and need your Win 2K up and running ASAP, you can boot with your Win 2K CD, choose repair, then run FixMBR and FixBOOT.

And yes, Partition Magic just does not work well with Win 2K, or should i say NTFS partitions. It will cause you to have the same problem your having now...

Cheers, Zegos!

damn i will get the same problem? are u shure? that freaking sucks lol

I have NTFS partitions which i converted from FAT32 partitions using Partition Magic 8.0... So I find it hard to believe that PM 8.0 doesn't work well with NTFS. Like I said earlier, as long as you setup LILO or GRUB (whichever you favor) correctly and make sure that your Windows partitions are active, and not hidden at all, then I don't see a problem. And like Zegos said - if worse does turn to poo, then you can always boot from the Win2k CD's and repair your Master Boot Record (MBR) using the tools on the CD. So all is not lost - give it another try.

As for partitioning your drives, the way I'd do it would be like this:

For the drive that windows will be occupying : format the entire thing to NTFS.
For the linux drive, I'd let the mandrake installer partition it automaticly.

Hey hey, lets not get miffed under the collar here, we are trying to be of help, not start a new thread on Partion Magic.

How about you try taking an NTFS partition and partioning it with PM. Let just see how far you get. Sure there are patchs and updates. But why? The Windows 2000 Boot Disk has the Console and repair utilities needed to repair your partition without using VERY UNRELIABLE 3rd party programs like PM on NTFS. Just do a search on Google for PM and NTFS, and read all the horror stories. Sure you can go from FAT to whatever, but manipulating NTFS is a whole different ball game.

As I said, use the Win 2K boot with utilities, it will get you out of the jam.

Bling, Zegos

Yeah, I'd pretty much have to agree. PM was great for carving off a chunk of space for me to put linux on, but I tried formatting with it and it completely screwed my drive

Basically, make sure you have enough space for linux (that unallocated part of your hard drive would work perfectly, if you'd like; or do like jasarien said and use your entire 120gb for windows and leave the 60gb for linux.) The 120gb, if it's the primary, should show up as /dev/hda and the 60gb should be /dev/hdb. If you've moved all your stuff off of the 60gb and it's just sitting there now with nothing important on it, delete the partitions on it before installing Mandrake. The installer should automatically find the (now-)unallocated space on your drive, ask if you'd like to install linux there, and there's an option in the next screen or so to let it automagically partition the space for linux. From then on, when it asks you to configure Lilo (my personal choice for a bootloader, no particular reason), just ensure that the entry for Windows says /dev/hda1. You shouldn't have any problems.

And really, don't be scared about Windows not booting again - there's going to be a way to fix it, and if you've backed up sufficiently beforehand you'll be alright in any case.

-Laura

oh man u guys are like super great help k, btw i never got a choice of liloor GRUB with mandrake... it just like installed one and always loaded it when i started windows lol, anyone no which one it used? i 'think' it was lilo, anways whats the file i need to edit for lilo incase windows doesnt load again? thanks again im writing all this down heh

The lilo.conf file is the one you're looking for and I believe you can find it under '/boot/lilo'...

And Zegos, Sorry dude, I didn't mean to sound offensive in anyway its just I've never had problems with PM 8.0