LILO vs Boot.ini... Round One

Caled · 08-10-2004, 06:40 AM

You guys are gonna love this...
I seem to have...err... 'misplaced' my boot.ini file under win2K pro. I can't use fixmbr from the recovery console as i also have RH9 installed, with LILO being used to choose between the two, and doing so would overwrite LILO, which would just be a pain to put back.
Win2K can still boot after displaying a message for a few seconds stating "missing boot.ini file. Booting from C:\WINNT". It will still load, but its just annoying, ya know.
I know this is more of a windows problem, but it has kind of a Linux twist, and you guys are better at this sort of thing than any windows forum ;-)

amosf · 08-10-2004, 07:13 AM

Make a lilo floppy or rescue cdrom - if you have mkrescue command and a cd burner then

mkrescue --iso

and burn the iso image to cd. It will allow you to boot back into linux after you fix windows.

you can do the same sort of thing with floppy with

lilo -b /dev/fd0

Test the floppy or cd before fixing windows with fixmbr...

amosf · 08-10-2004, 07:18 AM

Of course once you fix everything and boot back to linux you run lilo again so you can boot RH as before.

Caled · 08-10-2004, 07:34 AM

right, im a newbie at all this, so basically follow your instructions to create a LILO boot disk to get back into linux, test it, then use fixmbr, then boot back into linux. does the LILO boot disk automatically reinstall LILO as the default boot loader?

michaelk · 08-10-2004, 08:41 AM

Boot.ini is an ASCII text file located in c:\. fixmbr will not correct the problem.

http://www.pcplus.co.uk/tips/default...bsectionid=390
http://support.microsoft.com/default...;EN-US;q289022

fredgt · 08-10-2004, 09:08 AM

the boot.ini file is located in you're C drive and not on the MBR so reinstalling will not fix any problems with that.
If you can boot windows without a problem you just have to locate the boot.ini file and put it in the c:/ folder (your c drive) you will have to display hidden folders and files (its somewere in the explorer options)
If it is not found you can try to make one youself with notepad.
I don't know how it should look but you can look that up on the internet

pingu · 08-10-2004, 10:27 AM

Since boot.ini isn't needed, just create an empty file with that name. It could work?

Caled · 08-11-2004, 04:12 AM

I've tried searching for the boot.ini file with hidden system files shown, its gone...but where, who knows?
I've also tried replacing the boot.ini file with one i've seen which looks familiar to the one i used to have (i cant be 100% certain it was the same... can YOU remember every last letter and dash in your boot.ini file?) and it brings up a new message saying that it cant find something called NTOSKNL.exe, or something similar. Hm. I may just leave it as it is. I can't be one hundred percent certain, but I think this has all been caused by a virus. Damn them.

masand · 08-11-2004, 04:54 AM

here is mybot.ini
i have windows in hda5,i do not have anything in my C drive except the windows system files,msdos.sys,boot.ini, etc etc

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server" /fastdetect

regards
gaurav