how to remove the winXP boot loader?
 

hiho@ll

a few weeks ago i installed gentoo on my box
then i installed winXP
this means now i have the winXP boot loader
because it's time to switch completely to linux i want to remove the whole windows stuff
but i have a little problem

i'm booting my installed gentoo using the gentoo CD

bootloaderoptions: gentoo root=/dev/hde3

and gentoo boots (yeah, that's cool ;-) )

now i want to replace the winXP boot loader with my lilo boot loader (i don't use grub because grub caused serious problems because grub thought my kernel was too big? but it doesn't matter, lilo worked before winXP)
because i think i just have to use the same configuration i used before setting up WinXP i only did:

/sbin/lilo

rebooted and voila THE XP boot loader comes up???

rebooting again
booting with gentoo CD
trying this:
/sbin/lilo -v

it sais that the MBR of /dev/hde has been updated

rebooting
the same stuff again
booting with gentoo CD

/sbin/lilo -M /dev/hde
/sbin/lilo -M /dev/hdg

(i have 2 40Gb harddisks primary on /dev/hde (=gentoo) secondary on /dev/hdg (=XP))

rebooting
AND I SEE THE DAMN XP boot loader!!!

so my question:
how can i remove the fu..... XP boot loader?

thx@ll

OK. Let's review lilo a bit. If you give the command: /sbin/lilo, with no parameters, it will write to the MBR of the disk it's on. If you have a system with xp on the master (read primary) disk, and Linux on the slave (read secondary) disk, when you give the /sbin/lilo command, lilo writes to the MBR of the secondary disk, not the primary!

So. How to fix this. First, determine where (which disk) xp is installed; that's obviously the primary. Then do /sbin/lilo <the disk xp is on> to write lilo to the MBR of that disk, and not the disk Linux is on.

From the contents of your post, lilo probably did install to the MBR of hde, but hde is not the primary, it's the secondary, Xp is on hdg, and since the xp bootloader keeps coming up, hdg is the primary.

Try /sbin/lilo /dev/hdg, or something along those lines to put lilo on the MBR of the primary hard drive.

I would suggest using grub as the bootloader of choice, but the principles in either case are basically the same. What you need to accomplish is:

1. Rewrite the master boot record (MBR), which currently points to the XP loader, so that it points to another boot loader, be it Lilo or Grub.
2. Arrange for XP to be invoked -- basically starting with its boot loader as though the "real" boot loader did not exist at all -- when that (ick!) operating-system is selected.

There are copious notes about how to start-up XP correctly with an alternate boot loader.

Even if you get yourself into a sticky-spot, the system can always boot from a CD-ROM, and this is why a Knoppix CD (which you download and burn...) is particularly useful. So if you find yourself with a munged MBR, you can fix it.

i did fdisk on the XP hard disk and removed the bootable flag

then /sbin/lilo -b /dev/hde
/sbin/lilo -b /dev/hdg

and no i have my lilo back

thx@ll

do you have raid