Felix Miata writes: > James Sparenberg wrote: > >> I've found it a computer that will not install windows. Which really >> sucks in this case. > >> One of our employees got a set of Mandrake 9.0 disks from me, and >> took it home to install on her box. It's already running win2000. Well >> the first install she messed up somehow at the end (Not sure what she >> did but it wouldn't boot.) So she did the windows thing and re-installed >> it. ... ooops. Seems the first time she put lilo on the first >> partition from a set of disks she had. (I think she said it was 8,0) and >> the second was from the 9,0 and she put lilo in the mbr this time.... >> Linux went in like a dream... works great. problem is when she tries to >> boot into Win2000 .... the lilo on hda1 (her win2000 partition) locks up >> and won't accept keystrokes. ugg. Try to install win2000 again and let >> it repair itself.... no dice .. the dang box will not boot from the 2000 >> CD (tried 2 different ones that work on other boxes) nor will it boot >> from any of the recovery CD's Nor can win98 install or winXP. Linux >> works fine. > > It could be an "active" partition issue. No windoze version will > tolerate more than one "active" primary partition, while linux pays no > attention to this concept and sometimes will happily make an additional > primary "active". > >> Now to the question. What is the file on hda1 that would be the file >> that provides the lilo boot loader. If I could remove that file the >> lilo in the MBR would be able to boot windwos. Can't restore with lilo >> -u because the second install overwrote the first installs mbr backup. >> So all I can get with lilo -u is the hda1 lilo coming up and locking up. >> (2 keystoke max...) > >> Turns out DOS and NT boot disks/cd's don't recognize her cdrom or cdrw >> ... so they can't load them up. I would like to know what the file is >> though to remove from hda1 to destroy the unwanted lilo boot screen. >> Plan right now is to hang an older cdrom I have off of the box long >> enough to re-install windwoze and work from there. BTW Mandrake caught >> 100% of the hardware on this box without a problem. > > I don't think it is a question of a file to "remove". The problem is the > partition boot sector, which needs lilo replaced with the standard > windoze version. With w9x, this is simply booting the rescue floppy to > do 'SYS C:'. In W2K, I don't think there is such a thing as a rescue > floppy. You'll probably need to find a different CD reader that will > boot the W2K CD. When you boot that, there is a menu option "repair an > existing installation". If you choose that, it brings up two more > choices, "recovery console", and "emergency repair process". The latter > is probably what you need. > -- > ". . . . in everything, do to others what you would have them do > to you . . . ." Matthew 7:12 NIV > > Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 > > Felix Miata *** http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/partititioningindex.html > >
In the old days switching from Windows NT and OS/2 back to Windows 95 I used the Delpart tool to erase my partitions. Try looking at http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm. When you have erased all partitions and created a new primary partition - run the fdisk /mbr command. Jesper
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