On 09/06/11 12:05, K L wrote:
I have thrice now wiped the entire disk and re-installed, including physically zero-ing out the first 512 bytes (which I understand to be the MBR) so I would've expected the re-installs to deal with that.
If you're 100% sure the BIOS is set to boot off the correct disk once it's been wiped and reinstalled (you don't have a USB flash drive or MP3 player plugged in, do you?), then it's possible a "virus protection" setting on the BIOS is blocking overwriting the MBR.
Some BIOSes have a "virus protection" "feature" (*cough*) which basically blocks any attempts to write to the MBR. Or, in practice, I would imagine that it silently ignores attempts.
-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
