Mandrake 8.0 boot loader

BaRRaCuda · 05-21-2002, 02:34 PM

Is there any way to delete the boot loader in mandrake 8.0 without harming anything???

amp2000 · 05-21-2002, 06:28 PM

Do you want to delete Lilo or Grub & if so what do you mean by harming anything.
If you remove either lilo or grub you cant boot Linux without a bootdisk & if your dual booting with windows you also need a windows bootdisk to boot that, easily fixed though. Can you be a bit more specific & I'll help if I can..

jschiwal · 05-21-2002, 07:44 PM

I presume that you want to boot up from a boot disk instead and restore the original Master Boot Record.

First make and test a boot disk.

After you know the boot disk will work, from dos type:

fdisk /mbr

This will only boot up to windows as before. You will only be able to boot up using the boot disk, so perhaps make two or three, and test them all.

Good luck!

BaRRaCuda · 05-22-2002, 07:04 AM

Ok,

Here's my problem and what I'm trying to do. I have a client who has a dual-boot laptop running Windows 2000 and Mandrake 8.0. The Windows 2000 installation has developed a really nasty blue screening problem, which I have found a solution to but in order to fix the problem I need to run NTFSDOSPro in order to delete a few things, the problem is (I think) that because of the boot loader I cannot mount any NTFS drives as well as any FAT drives if I boot from a Windows boot disk. I hope this clears the air a bit.

BaRRaCuda · 05-22-2002, 07:23 AM

On a side note:

I'm not sure what boot loader has been installed but I doubt it's LILO or GRUB. It has a light blue background that on the left side says Mandrake 8.0 and at the top right of the screen it has boot options. linux,windows,failsafe and floppy

Thymox · 05-22-2002, 10:47 AM

That's (graphical) LiLo.

You say that you need to run NTFSDOSPro, which as I take it from here, is a bootdisk of-a-sort (that costs $299 - that's an expensive floppy!). You should be able to boot from a floppy disk fine, just pop it in the drive before you get to the Lilo menu, just make sure that floppy comes before harddrive in to boot sequence under your computer's BIOS.

BaRRaCuda · 05-22-2002, 10:56 AM

For some reason I can't access any of the drives. I wanted to mount the NTFS partitions so I could manually remove some stuff so I can get rid of the blue screen problems.

Thymox · 05-22-2002, 11:36 AM

Sounds more like a problem with NTFSDOSPro. Just incase you haven't got it, here's the manual (also for others to read). Please take heed of the warning at the bottom of page 3.

As far as I can tell from the manual, you need to create a bog-standard DOS boot disk, and then put the ntfsdospro program on it. You should be able to do this without booting from 2k anyway. Can you boot from a 'normal' DOS boot floppy (i.e. one made from w98)?

BaRRaCuda · 05-22-2002, 11:46 AM

Yes,

But I still can't see any of the drives. c:\ <enter> d:\ <enter>

does nothins...invalid drive specification. Then I'll reboot using the NTFSDOS and I get the following "No NTFS Drives could be mounted"

amp2000 · 05-22-2002, 01:42 PM

What's error is win2k giving when it's bluescreening, what file is it missing ?
Depending on what the error is, you could be wasting your time & have to run win2k setup again losing everything that was there.

BaRRaCuda · 05-22-2002, 01:47 PM

Unfortunately,

That's part of the problem....the blue screen is instantaneous. The screen pretty much just flashes blue and reboots. I can read physical memory dump.....that's it. Really quick. I think my only option is to rebuild the damn thing as much as I hate to

My client will be real happy to here that!! Here's what I say.

amp2000 · 05-22-2002, 05:28 PM

I hate to say it, but that definitely sounds like a rebuild

Unless any one else has any suggestions ????

BaRRaCuda · 05-23-2002, 07:04 AM

I'm gonna wait a day and see if anyone has any other suggestions, if not, it's sounds like rebuild time to me.

Thymox · 05-24-2002, 10:19 AM

If you can get into Linux, try and mount the NTFS filesystem (if it's visible), copy the files over to a Linux partition, burn to a CD (if possible) then rebuild. This, unfortunately, appears to be the only way you may be able to save any data. It sounds like you may have a problem with your partition table (or part of it), so it is also unlikely that you will be able to do the above, but you can but try.