This is tricky - replacing the MBR when things already work would be dangerous! It can destroy boot menus and similar.
I would say if there is NO MBR at all yet, it would be okay to automatically replace it. If there is some MBR, but the DOS partition is not yet marked as bootable, it would be a good idea to ASK the user whether that should happen. Hi Louis :-) If boot menus are used, MBR should NOT change by default: The user would have to add DOS to that boot menu MANUALLY. Also, the users should of course be able to overwrite a boot menu MBR with a default MBR at their own risk by MANUAL choice. Note that a boot menu can allow you to install DOS even into non-primary partitions. However, our SYS might not know which special boot sector / BPB values are required to boot there. Non-primary partitions have relative disk position offsets. This discussion is related to the question whether DOS should change partitioning during install: I think NOT by default. We do not have sufficiently modern tools to resize existing partitions, so changes would often destroy other data. When DOS is installed to an EMPTY disk or VM, it is of course okay to replace "no partitions" and install DOS partitions :-) If other partitions exist, I would ask the user to make some FAT partition for DOS (with their own tools) and try again later. Of course the user can always be offered to destroy existing partitions and use FDISK, if they REALLY want to do that. Cheers, eric > Well...so I finished my testing late last night with the MSI Wind Netbook. > I ran into an issue the MBR was never updated by FDI 1.2. :/ Figured it > out eventually. You can read more about it here [0]. There's pictures and > video. > > Now, I need to produce an ISO now for the eMachines M6805 I have (no > support for USB flash drive boot; tried several BIOSes). > > [0] https://sites.google.com/site/lpsantil/fdi12-msi-wind ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
