[Glastonbury] dual boot issues

[peter.t.cole]

Win 98 was not a problem he could install this ok on the drive he then
did an xp upgrade in it would not work. fixmbr did not work even form
the xp rescue console. I know i dual booted mandrake 9.2 ok with XP as
this was on a laptop at work, this was why i was very surprised with
mandrake 10 not working, it may have more to do with partition magic ? 
i used the mandrake ntfs resize on the 9.2 install i did. I still tink
mandrake is a bit funny with it's partitions. i have down loaded Knoppix
3.4 at work and need to burn it to CD i will then install on my laptop
again but this only dual boots with 98.
yes it was using lilo.
He had xp installed then used partition magic to partition his drive to
leave space for Linux then installed mandrake 10 

On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 11:22, Kelvin McNulty wrote:
> I dual boot SuSE 8.1 and it uses Grub but the Windows is 98 SE on one machine 
> and ME on the other. I have heard about XP doing weird stuff... but if you 
> ever get into that situation with the earlier versions you can recover it by 
> reinstating the boot sector on the boot hard disc (c: in windows). When I 
> first installed SuSE, for a while I was using floppy boot to go to Linux and 
> hard disc boot to go to Windows until I figured it out.
> 
> >From the SuSE 7.2 Reference Manual (was the first version of SuSE that I 
> installed):
> 
> ",,,DOS must be installed on the first hard disc. The executable code in the 
> MBR (Master Boot Record) ("first stage boot loader") tests whether the marked 
> partition contains a valid boot sector..."
> 
> so the DOS boot code must always be there. So yes, Windows is fussy about 
> having to boot from the beginning of the disc.
> 
> For a while I kept a binary image of the Windows version of that sector, the 
> first 512 bytes of which 446 contain the boot loader, and a binary image of 
> the Linux dual boot loader, so I could swap between the two... but now that I 
> have three computers all working I have relaxed enough to not need that 
> anymore...
> 
> There is a process you can do in Windows 98 SE to restore the boot sector to 
> an MS-DOS one but I don't know if that will work with XP, but it ought to.
> 
> I recall using another Windows machine to make a floppy on which I could run 
> an MS-DOS command (having booted from the floppy) to restore the Windows boot 
> sector on the hard disc...
> 
> Ah - here is how to do it (from the SuSE 7.2 reference manual):
> 
> in Windows 98, once you have rescue-booted into it, get a MS-DOS prompt
> 
> C:\> 
> 
>  and type: FDISK /MBR
> 
> This writes the 446 byte bootloader into the MBR.
> 
> You can use the dd command to copy a file out of or into the MBR in Linux:
> 
> WARNING - DO NOT USE THIS UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND IT
> and take care not to switch if and of or you might lose everything by making 
> it do the operation the wrong way round....
> Read the man pages for dd in Linux. ( man dd at a shell prompt).
> 
> dd if=/dev/yyyy of=mbrbackup bs=512 count=1
> The above makes a backup copy of the MBR
> 
> and
> 
> dd if=mbrbackup of=/dev/yyyy will write the backup boot sector back into the 
> MBR.
> 
> where yyyy is the name of the disc you are booting from e.g. hda1, hda2 etc.
> 
> I did use those commands for a while to switch into and out of being windows 
> bootable and I offer them in the knowledge that IF YOU MISUSE THEM YOU MIGHT 
> END UP WITH AN UNBOOTABLE COMPUTER - like if you write the MBR in the wrong 
> place you might wipe the partitioning so you can't get at your data even with 
> a rescue disk. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED - try the above at your own risk.
> 
> I disclaim all responsibility... etc. and offer the above with happy memories 
> of how empowering it felt to do the above and get out of the clutches of 
> Micro$oft once and for all.
> 
> But with Windows XP, when googling about it, I do remember seeing things about 
> XP boxing clever, so you'll need to look that up... don't use XP on any of my 
> computers and don't think I ever want to...
> 
> Best,
> 
> Kelvin
> 
> On Tuesday 11 May 2004 23:16, tim hall wrote:
> > Peter,
> >
> > On Tuesday 11 May 2004 20:59, peter.t.cole wrote:
> > > OH dear it installed linux ok but would not boot into windows he coul
> > > not recover windows the only way he could restore windows was to pull
> > > the hard rive an install in another machine and do a secure erase ( he
> > > did use partition magic to create the partition for Linux).
> >
> > Were you using lilo or grub? (i.e. how were you trying to boot windows).
> > It's kind of hard to answer your questions without knowing what the
> > problems are in more detail. Are you _sure_ you correctly configured your
> > bootloader?
> >
> > I know Windows is fussy about having to boot from the beginning of the
> > disk, is this still the case? (I don't know as I don't double boot With
> > windows). Forgive me if you've been using *nix since I was in junior school
> > and this is something much more arcane.
> >
> > cheers
> >
> > tim hall
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Glastonbury at mailman.lug.org.uk
> > http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/glastonbury
> 
> 
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