[pioSko]

the system:

WinXP SP1
Mandrake 9.2
Lilo on Master Boot Record (not boot sector of partition)

Q1: If I install Aurox over Mandrake and write over the MBR using Lilo again, and something goes wrong with the MBR, will I be able to reinstall Mandrake and therefore reinstall the old Lilo + MBR?

Q2: What would happen if I, during installation of Aurox, have it write the boot record on the boot sector of the partition, while not doing anything to the MBR?

Q3: Can I fixmbr to get rid of Lilo to clean the MBR and have JUST XP start, which would allow me to simply install Aurox on boot secot of partition.

Q4: Anything else I could do?


Reinstalling XP is NOT an option. Too much to do at this moment.

[edit] it might be grub, not lilo

This post has been edited by Red|5: 10 November 2004 - 09:20 AM

[cyberscribe]

Red|5, on Nov 10 2004, 08:15 AM, said:

[edit] it might be grub, not lilo

uh... that changes everything.

I like grub. I say use grub for your MBR and keep your other oses on first sector.

You could also go vmware.

[pioSko]

100% sure... it's Lilo

[cyberscribe]

Q1: Don't do that.

Q2: Then you can configure Lilo to allow you to select Mandrake or Aurox

Q3: Yeah, you probabl could, but you'd loose Mandrake

Q4: Yeah. Use VMWare.

[bsdninja]

Q1:If you reinstall mandrake from a cd and it reinstalls lilo then yes. every time you install lilo it overwrites the last install. if you use hose the whole thing you can use a linux boot cd like a recovery cd or a boot disk and you can edit your /etc/lilo.conf to fix any problems. make sure to run lilo after you make any changes.

Q2: what do you mean?

Q3:yes, and you can run through the steps above to repair lilo

Q4: Anything else I could do? you could allways make a boot disk for each distro and leave the MBR alone then just pop in the disk for what you want to boot and use no disk to go to windows.

[pioSko]

thanx for your help guys. And although my system is working fine now, I had major problems before xmas.

I had a week off from work because I was sick. So I decided to fix things up on the puter. Man did I fuck up.

Installed Aurox 10.1 beta over Mandrake. Aurox only had the option of installing GRUB so I did over the previous LILO MBR...

After install Linux loaded just fine. Even my Radeon 9600 PRO was detected and .. *gulp* worked. (didn't in Mandrake 9.2)

So I reboot and start windows... fuck. It don't work. <panic here>

fixmbr from winXP cd and win2000 cd did not work
fdisk /mbr from win95, winME did not work

Using xp rescue from cd, i saw that all my files on C:\ were still there <less panic>. But I could not copy anything on to 2nd disk!!

To get more info on this matter I needed the net. Booted Aurox Linux and found that I had no interweb. It wasn't automaticaly setup during install like with Mandrake.

I reinstall Mandrake and to my relief managed to get video card working in X. 800x600 60Mhz, but it worked.

I started looking for a way of copying my files. Mandrake saw my partitions but they were NTFS and so it didn't see the data.

Tired, confused (and slightly high from the medication I was taking), I got out the win2000 cd and using rescue...

... i individualy copied 700 files from C:\ to 2nd disk!

win2000 rescue works like dos except its like a MAJOR lite version of dos... when copying you CAN'T use wildcard ie. *.*

therefore copying a folder with 20 files = 21 command line entries

A nightmare was copying Mozilla Thunderbird files. Every file in every folder had to be copied with the same folder structure. Let me just tell you the command line was loooooong. SOmetimes 4 rows

Anyways, after all 700 files were moved, I used Xp to do a clean install, wiping the mbr, partitions and data on the disk.

My memory is a little rusty about what happened next but I know I could not install Problems with partition structure.

Installed mandrake.

90% of sites showed that fixmbr should have worked. So, I checked Aurox forums and found other people had similar problems.

Some said that the Mandrake install does something crazy to MBR, others said that Aurox was to blame. Either way, there was a solution.

Used Aurox CD4 to do linux rescue and wiped the mbr, partitions and entire disk clean... as new.

WinXP installed itself.

I stopped panicing.

1 week off work where I should have been playing HL2 and NFSU2.. wasted infront of a DOSLite command prompt.

This post has been edited by Red|5: 06 January 2005 - 01:36 AM