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Grex Micros Item 218: Lilo and the MBR on Win98 Help needed!
Entered by raven on Wed Oct 20 20:54:36 UTC 1999:

I installed Mandrake Linux on my cyrix/200 machine and lilo
seems to have done something to the master boot record for win98.
I can boot Linux fine into x-windows but Win98 won't boot even
from a floppy.  I checked out the lilo config and it points
to the linux boot image which is not on the c: drive which 
windows is on.  Is there some way I can configure lilo so it
will point to what it needs to boot win98 on the c drive?  Or
as an alternate can I restore the MBR using the win98 cd?

Any help is greatly appreaciated I need to at least get some of my work
off the fat16 winn c: drive.

BTW I got into this mess thinking I could just install Linux on the e:
drive and use the bios at startup to select the o.s. now I see it
doesn't work that way. :-(

9 responses total.

#1 of 9 by scott on Wed Oct 20 21:52:19 1999:

Can you boot with a DOS diskette and see the Win98 files?  Or did your Win98
installation use FAT32?

#2 of 9 by raven on Thu Oct 21 02:42:46 1999:

fat16 I was able to boot with win98 boot disk, but it's not working this
afternoon.

#3 of 9 by scott on Thu Oct 21 12:31:57 1999:

fdisk /mbr
?

#4 of 9 by raven on Thu Oct 21 18:31:41 1999:

fdisk is the dos disc formatter, right?  Are you saying I can just type that
if I get a dos prompt and it will restore the mbr?  Well I shall give
that a try?  Thanks.

#5 of 9 by scott on Thu Oct 21 19:16:54 1999:

I should have been more verbose.  /mbr will restore the Master Boot Record
to whatever is "appropriate" to the fdisk in question.  Not sure how Win98
fdisk will do this...

(But the DOS version saved my butt some time ago)

#6 of 9 by raven on Thu Oct 21 19:43:27 1999:

Scott you are a genuis it worked!  Win 98 won't recognize my new hd that is
formated in Linux.  Can I reinstall lilo now on that drive and get a dual
boot sytem by specifing the linux drive e: in the bios on startup?  Thanls
again you saved my butt, I have pagemaker files that need to be sent to a
client, whew <raven wipes forhead>.

#7 of 9 by scott on Thu Oct 21 20:29:28 1999:

No problem; I'm not sure that /mbr is documented in any obvious place (I might
have even gotten from MS tech support long ago) but it is an occasional life
saver.

You're on your own for lilo, since I don't know anything about it.  You may
have a version that's old enough to not grok Win98... (but I doubt that).

#8 of 9 by gull on Thu Oct 21 23:05:11 1999:

/MBR is an undocumented switch in most Microsoft versions.  The only place
I've seen it documented is in 3rd-party stuff.  Sure is handy, though.

#9 of 9 by mwg on Thu Jan 20 20:13:08 2000:

(I really need to re-order my .cflist)  Now that Windows is working, if
you have a boot disk that will start linux, you can use lilo to get going,
I entered a procedure for this in another item a few minutes ago.

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