Re: [expert] lilo ?? install 9.1
I think the MBR can't be of any trouble, because it is completely overwritten by the bootloader (as far as I know) It's only a small space, where a link to the rest of the booting files resides. Is it really possible to manipulate the MBR so that it can cause troubles with other OS' ? I know some windows-versions rewrote the MBR on startup, but I never experienced this with win2k. (I used lilo as bootloader) according to my personal experiences, winXP sucks bigtime. The only 'good' windows versions I know are NT and 2000 (NT, btw, wasn't developed by MS but bought from some other company, and 2k was NT + some extra features) Again, I could be wrong, but that's why I write this and hope for replies :-) Steven On Thu, 2003-06-12 at 22:07, richard bown wrote: Hi all I've had a real bad experience using a hard drive that previously had winxp on it. I ran very low on HD space so I took the 60GB HD out of the winxp machine , installed as hdc and backed up what files I needed off that drive. next step was to delete the ntfs partitions and repartition with ext3, All apparently went well, and I transfered wanted files from hda to hdc. Checked everything was all right, and all the files moved across were in a partiton on hdc. the next step was to reinstall the system on to the 60GB drive(was hdc), and to use just 1 HD on this machine. So fresh install of 9.1 and this is were things went horribly wrong, on boot up no partitions had been written, tried to repair and failed, tried using the rescue facility ...that failed. So again another fresh install and this time made a boot floppy as well. again on reboot failure, so used the rescue facility to rerun the boot loader, Tried another bootup , same again reran the boot sector loader from rescue and this time the next reboot was successful.. After speaking to a few people I'm not the only person to have had problems with drives after winxp was installed on them. I suspect this may be a gates measure to deliberately make it awkward to change OS's once winxp has been installed, microsoft have done this before. Maybe ,and this is the point I'm trying to make, the developers need to look at the lilo or grub, to assume the MBR to contain hostile material and delete it before installing. If a newbie had decided to kick winxp off their machine and move to linux, I feel they would give up trying to install linux and go back to winblows. regards Richard Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] lilo ?? install 9.1
Its all very well Steven but., I 've installed many times all the way from Redhat 4.5 upwards, the first version of Mandrake was 7.0 then onward to MDK9.1. Not only on my machines,also on other peoples to get them started on Linux, and on numerous HD's with all sorts of variations of windows and OS2. The only times I've had lilo or grub fail has been due to a kernel I've compiled and made a few mistakes . The install of MDK9.1 is as close to idiot proof as you can get, and the developers should be proud of their work, but for 3 installs to fail to boot on a system which had only been running well on MDK9.1, with only one change the HD, makes me very suspicious. When I find others have have problems installing on a HD which previously had windowsXP on it, points the finger towards microsoft. I did consider the possibility of a virus on the MBR , but I had Macfee running on the windows machine before I used the HD on this machine, and it showed no trace of any infection. All I'm suggesting is the developers take a look at the bootloader on the Distro and see if it can be made more aggressive. Richard On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 16:49, Steven Broos wrote: I think the MBR can't be of any trouble, because it is completely overwritten by the bootloader (as far as I know) It's only a small space, where a link to the rest of the booting files resides. Is it really possible to manipulate the MBR so that it can cause troubles with other OS' ? I know some windows-versions rewrote the MBR on startup, but I never experienced this with win2k. (I used lilo as bootloader) according to my personal experiences, winXP sucks bigtime. The only 'good' windows versions I know are NT and 2000 (NT, btw, wasn't developed by MS but bought from some other company, and 2k was NT + some extra features) Again, I could be wrong, but that's why I write this and hope for replies :-) Steven On Thu, 2003-06-12 at 22:07, richard bown wrote: Hi all I've had a real bad experience using a hard drive that previously had winxp on it. I ran very low on HD space so I took the 60GB HD out of the winxp machine , installed as hdc and backed up what files I needed off that drive. next step was to delete the ntfs partitions and repartition with ext3, All apparently went well, and I transfered wanted files from hda to hdc. Checked everything was all right, and all the files moved across were in a partiton on hdc. the next step was to reinstall the system on to the 60GB drive(was hdc), and to use just 1 HD on this machine. So fresh install of 9.1 and this is were things went horribly wrong, on boot up no partitions had been written, tried to repair and failed, tried using the rescue facility ...that failed. So again another fresh install and this time made a boot floppy as well. again on reboot failure, so used the rescue facility to rerun the boot loader, Tried another bootup , same again reran the boot sector loader from rescue and this time the next reboot was successful.. After speaking to a few people I'm not the only person to have had problems with drives after winxp was installed on them. I suspect this may be a gates measure to deliberately make it awkward to change OS's once winxp has been installed, microsoft have done this before. Maybe ,and this is the point I'm trying to make, the developers need to look at the lilo or grub, to assume the MBR to contain hostile material and delete it before installing. If a newbie had decided to kick winxp off their machine and move to linux, I feel they would give up trying to install linux and go back to winblows. regards Richard __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com -- richard bown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] lilo ?? install 9.1
Hi all I've had a real bad experience using a hard drive that previously had winxp on it. I ran very low on HD space so I took the 60GB HD out of the winxp machine , installed as hdc and backed up what files I needed off that drive. next step was to delete the ntfs partitions and repartition with ext3, All apparently went well, and I transfered wanted files from hda to hdc. Checked everything was all right, and all the files moved across were in a partiton on hdc. the next step was to reinstall the system on to the 60GB drive(was hdc), and to use just 1 HD on this machine. So fresh install of 9.1 and this is were things went horribly wrong, on boot up no partitions had been written, tried to repair and failed, tried using the rescue facility ...that failed. So again another fresh install and this time made a boot floppy as well. again on reboot failure, so used the rescue facility to rerun the boot loader, Tried another bootup , same again reran the boot sector loader from rescue and this time the next reboot was successful.. After speaking to a few people I'm not the only person to have had problems with drives after winxp was installed on them. I suspect this may be a gates measure to deliberately make it awkward to change OS's once winxp has been installed, microsoft have done this before. Maybe ,and this is the point I'm trying to make, the developers need to look at the lilo or grub, to assume the MBR to contain hostile material and delete it before installing. If a newbie had decided to kick winxp off their machine and move to linux, I feel they would give up trying to install linux and go back to winblows. regards Richard -- richard bown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
