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On 20/01/11 17:40, John Edwards wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:20110120174055.GA1853@cornerstonelinux.co.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 05:32:20PM +0000, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:david@gbenet.com">david@gbenet.com</a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
Windows 2000 Pro does prevent you from booting from a CD or DVD - and the only way to get
rid of Windows 2000 Pro is to delete the MBR.
In fact though you can set your order of boot in the BIOS this is ignored. I have installed
Windows 2000 Pro about 6 times - all on laptops all with the BIOS to boot from the CD or DVD
drive and all fail to boot. I've used DFSee to delete the MBR - success!
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">
What CD were you trying to boot?
No sane BIOS should be reading the hard disk MBR before deciding
whether to boot from a CD, but the software on the CD itself might.
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
Indeed windows xp install disks do this before even displaying a
single character onscreen! The upshot is that a corrupt MBR can
completely hang a windows disk without any indication that it's
started to load - all you get is a plain black screen with a single
flashing cursor - helpful! Deleting the MBR from a linux live CD
does the trick, then the windows disk will boot and you can do
fixmbr.<br>
<br>
BTW: The problem persists after zeroing the entire disk, ergo tis
not the MBR at fault (or not ONLY the MBR at fault). I would
seriously hope that a computers BIOS would have a way of determining
the number of blocks available on a disk without recourse to reading
that value from its MBR - there would be so many things wrong with
that if it did :/<br>
<br>
Roger.<br>
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