Any help will be greatly appreciated .

Yesterday my boss asked if I could install a sound card on the company pc i said sure . To get the sound card to work i had to reinstall windows 98 se .. After doing so when i rebooted the pc the Debian / Windows 98 boot option was gone and windows would start . I didnt know that windows woud remove the option on install . I have downloaded partitian magic and linux is still on the hard drive i just do know how to get the debian
startup option back ? We use debain to view Oil-Well log files (tiff files) print and load files off are mole disk to the hard drive ? I dont know much about linux and the other employess dont know much either . It is a 5 hour drive one way for a tech to fix this . And i am a new employee and this screw up may be my last . Any suggestions or tutorials would be alot of help . Thanks Mike

OK If you boot off your debian CD and get it to the install menu. Press Alt+F2 and you should get a rescue console

Now I assume that you HDD is /dev/hda
Do the following
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
chroot /mnt
vi /etc/lilo.conf
Add the following lines (assuming windows is /dev/hda5)

other=/dev/hda5
label=Windows

Save + Quit
run "lilo"
reboot

HTH

Rgds

Rus

May I add:
You should always make a boot floppy for your debian install. This problem of yours is a very common beginner problem. Also it would be better for you to boot your linux from a floppy since this is a company pc.

[soapbox]
Okay, your first problem was assuming you had to reinstall windows to get the soundcard to work. I have friends that reinstall windows anytime that something doesn't work, and I understand that the windows mantra has become reinstall, reinstall, reinstall. Still, for my own systems (DOS 3.2-6.22, win3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 98, 98SE, ME, and 2000), I have yet to remove and reinstall windows for any problem (knock on wood). While it's an "easy" fix to most problems, it's just a bad habit that MS and other companies don't seem to mind promoting. Yes, I've had nearly 20 years on IBM-style hardware (i'm only 30, btw), but that doesn't excuse people from not spending a little more time trying to actually fix a problem.
[/soapbox]

You simply need to use your bootdisk (you have one, correct?) and boot into debian that way. Then run 'lilo' as
root to reinstall your previous boot loader settings. (Windows overwrites them when installing, of course.) You can also use your debian disks as rescue disks (depending on your version) and enter debian that way.

This is assuming you are using lilo in the first place. If you use grub (i don't, I'm old-fashioned about that, too), here is a place you can learn more.

http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub/html_mono/grub.html

It's the same idea, however. You should just have to tell grub to write it's information to the MBR. If your windows box is 2000 (XP?), you're going to want to use the windows boot loader to control the booting. In that case, simply tell the windows bootloader which partitions to access.

Again, don't be so hasty to reinstall a complete OS (windows or linux), especially in a corporate setting, unless you have good reason to. Doing so only numbs your brain to otherwise easy fixes.

Okay, I reread my post, and I apologize for the arrogant manner I must have implied. Still, I stand by my statement, so I'm not going to edit it into limbo. Basically, what I was getting at was that MS (to it's credit) recognizes that it's products aren't perfect, and as a result, they provide add/remove hardware/software programs, as well as cab files and regedit(32) to assist sysadmins with problems. Learning to use these things, among other techniques, should be a #1 goal of anyone that wants to be a sysadmin for any reasonable amount of time. Also, you don't necessarily have to spend big $$$ on courses to learn this stuff, as there are plenty of resources on the internet.

This is a reply from scott_R's e-mail.

scott,

In your post you said:

>If your windows box is 2000 (XP?), you're going to want to use the windows boot loader to control the booting.

I'm wondering what makes you say that?

I would be very intersted to have more info about that. Because I've now a box with W98,RH9.0 & LFS and Grub as boot loader. I would like to add W2000 but I'm very afraid not beeing able to re-install Grub afterward and so to loose my linuxes .

I have already read a lot about that. but it's always speaking about installing linux after windows and not the opposite. It looks much more dangerous.

Any hints?

Cyr

PS: First post on this forum. Apologies if I didn't stick perfectly to the "etiquette".