On Sun, 03 Dec 2000, you wrote:
> Not that I can't recover, but I would like to get some insight to
> what I did wrong. Last night I decided to install mandrake 7.2 on my system
> that has 2 hdds with 3 paritions on each. The last parition on both hdd's
> was a software raid 0 from NT. The first 2 paritions on each hdd had a copy
> of NT 4 that I was duel booting between (acutally one was a backup copy
> just in case). So I had 3G of free hdd space on the second hdd, with the
> boot loader on the 1st hdd, ( so at worst I thought nothing would affect
> the 1st hdd). So in this free space is where I mounted the swap and system
> linux parition. And here is where I think I might of screwed up. I formated
> the linux parition with ext2. From the install guide it said I would
> eventually be given the choice to rewrite the mbr or if there was another
> boot loader then you can choose to install some boot files to the first
> sector of the boot parition. Then you can just add an entry in the boot
> loader for linux. Well this step never came up, it went ahead and just
> installed the lilo/grub. And from there linux is fine but I haven't been
> able to get back into NT( and of course I spaced making a recovery disk) My
> next step was just to reinstall NT back into the first parition on the
> first hdd but basically NT wasn't able to work with my drives anymore to
> reinstall NT. So here is where I need help, as far as I can tell I need to
> go thru the linux install and wipe out everything on my drives, exit, then
> reinstall NT then try reinstalling linux using some other file system than
> ext2?
I wouldn't have said so. Ext2 is clearly the right thing to put Linux on
although the swap file is not usually ext2. I have heard about issues
between NT4/2000 and Linux but I missed that lesson having always used the
easier Windows (95,98 and ME). What you can do to get Windows back is sstart
in DOS susing your WinNT boot disk and at the prompt type "fdisk /mbr" This
should your old Master Boot Record back and you will get into NT4 because it
takes over the system wherever possible.
Then try getting on to your Linux Disk with the Linux Boot Disk and go to
Drakeconf. Try using the Grub/lilo boot configuration tool there and tell it
to install to HDA (first hard drive) for both systems. This ought to work.
