boot problem,windows reinstall?
i have windows xp,windows 2000,linux mandrake.
first on mbr it has lilo i have linux mandrake option windows option if i go to windows it gives me windows boot menu between w2k and wxp. now i want to reinstall w2k. wouldnt this erase lilo ? i think so. what workarounds or solutions to this problem are there ? i will provide any information necessary. thank you |
Backup the MBR using "dd", install Win 2000 and then restore the MBR. Then add the corresponding settings for booting Wind 2000 to your favourite boot manager.
MBR can be backed up using: Code:
dd if=/dev/hda of=backup.file count=1 bs=448 Code:
dd of=/dev/hda if=backup.file bs=448 count=1 |
it seems i dont have any windows 2000 at hand...
i would like to try to reinstall over the old windows 2000 a new windows xp would the configuration i have to do change in this casE ? |
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Or you could just re-install the loader from the (Linux) install CD in recovery mode. |
how would i reinstall boot loader in recovery mode ? exactly...
i have mandrake 10.0 official 3 cds ubuntu 5.1 one cd and damnsmalllinux live cd.. could anyone give some steps for this ? |
syg00 if partition looks like this
|------------------------------|-------------------------------- i imagine that the || zone is taken by 448 parameter now if i do 446 its like this |----------------------------|---------------------------------- so the difference from the first is that it doesnt take in account byte 447 and 448 otherwise its the same. wouldnt you agree with this ? so its not about the FIRST 2 bytes |
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Will be better than we can describe from the "outside". Quote:
The MBR has an exact structure - 446 bytes for loader code, 64 bytes for partition table, 2 bytes for signature bytes. Bytes 447 and 448 are the first two bytes of the partition table - and are potentialy very important to the health of a system. |
i would like to use a disk to store this info on
would there be any distro to fit on one disk ? it would suffice to have commands like ls,cp,mv,dd and maybe some ed or nano or maybe vi for editing and kernel and all that stuff plugged in there what distro on a single diskette ? ok ok...ill use a live cd altough the question above remains open thank you very much for the explanation on mbr i understood something new about it now... i was planning on reading about it but i didnt felt much like it so i left that ... for another time |
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Code:
dd of=/dev/hda if=backup.file bs=446 count=1 |
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If you mean floppy disks, it's hard to get a full distribution on there, naturally, but there are some fully-featured rescue-style disks out there. Tom's Root Boot is "The most GNU/Linux on one floppy disk" and it certainly has a lot of features - including ls, cp, mv, dd and much more. It eschews pico/nano though, since it includes vi as its default editorand presumably including two would be wasteful (it's worth learning vi to at least a "being able to use it" standard anyway). I've heard of a few others too, but Tom's does seem to be the most fully featured, and the one that comes up most often. If you were thinking of business-card sized CDs, there are a few distros that will fit on one of these (with a 50Mb limit, IIRC). Again, it seems to be generally accepted that Damn Small Linux (DSL) is one of, if not the, best. Though you mention you already have one of their live CDs, so you can judge for yourself, and Google is always there if you fancy checking out other options! |
I think the whole matter can be simplified by using Lilo itself.
Log in Mandrake as root, click terminal, pop in a floppy and type Code:
lilo -b /dev/fd0 Code:
lilo -b /dev/hda (2) No need to worry about the 446 or 448 bytes problem. I have to say though it should be 446 because we then have 4x16 byes for the partition table plus 2 spare bytes at the end making up the 512 bytes of the MBR. syg00's point is to avoid hitting the partition table as the consequence can be serious. Mandrake can be made bootable at any time via any Live CD and so I wouldn't worry if the floppy is lost. |
i had a very rapid change of mind
i want just got a .iso of vector linux and plan on putting that on the space ill get after formatting the area where w2k supposed to be. now how would i do this ? just saved my partition table on a cd with dd |
Vector Linux should detect the Mandrake install.
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You don't need to save the partition table just write down how many of them and the sizes because you can always rebuild it from scratch. I have rebuilt a couple of 60-partition partitions about dozen times without any loss of data.
Vector only needs about 5Gb for a install and it uses Lilo too. |
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