Windows NT dual boot issues
 

annoying details:

We got some new gateway 700XL's (sweet machines) and one of th profs here wants to put linux on them so he can run some VLSI software... problem is we also need to run NT on it for other reasons. I have NT set up on the first two partitions (~30GB out of 120GB) and an empty 60GB partition. The idea was to install linux on the tail end, filling out the 120GB drive.

</annoying background>


So I install + setup NT, get everything happy after much effort ( I despise NT ). Figure I'll use it's bootloader like most files instruct me to... Install RedHat 7.3 (latest I could find from their site).

Install LILO onto the /boot partition, boot from floppy, and copy the bootsector 512byts just like I'm told... copy it back to the C;\ drive, and put it into NT's boot.ini.


when I select linux from the boot menu, I get blinking cursor. No activity (I waited a while) nuttin' ... so I try again, perhaps I screwed up the "dd of=/...." command. Still, no dice.

So is there some command to check the boot partition? some way to make sure lilo is working? If the bootsector isn't working right, perhaps I copied from the wrong partition... but I don't think so. Any tips on how to get this darn thing to work?

-Pete (VERY frustrated, mostly at NT)

when u did the copy of the dd if=/dev/hda?..............

you are suppose to copy from the /boot partition instead of the /, many people mistaken for this

Couple of thoughts...
Are you sure you have LILO (RH tends to prefer GRUB these days)

If you want to go back to what you had under NT, boot of any DOS floppy and run fdisk /mbr. This should restore the original MBR and you can try again...

Boot into linux and check to see that your /etc/lilo.conf is correct. Make sure the boot= line is set to the /boot partition and make sure the image= line is set to the root ' / ' partition. Then run as root /sbin/lilo.

Next, run as root dd if=/dev/hd?? of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1. Replace the ?? with the correct partition info. Then just copy bootsect.lnx to the c: partition and edit boot.ini.

Just install a linux bootloader like grub or lilo... it will make things work much easier.