Fixed... yet another query
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Okay, I got over the LILO problem in my last post, but I've got another problem. The genius that is the Windows installer has made C: my system partition and D: my boot partition. I need to make C: my boot partition as well (cuz D is beyond the 1024 cylinder limit of LILO). How do I do this? Simply copying ntldr and company doesn't work. Thanks.
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Okay, I got over the LILO problem in my last post, but I've got another problem. The genius that is the Windows installer has made C: my system partition and D: my boot partition. I need to make C: my boot partition as well (cuz D is beyond the 1024 cylinder limit of LILO). How do I do this? Simply copying ntldr and company doesn't work. Thanks.
Ok first of all, it's a bad idea installing LILO on your MBR, as I'm sure you've found out yourself. :) sultan_of_6string wrote: I need to make C: my boot partition as well You can have only one boot partition, can't have more. To make a partition bootable, use fdsik. Make a Win9x boot floppy and copy fdisk.exe in there. Start your machine from the disks and run fdisk. It will give you the option of making a partiton bootable. The best (that is, safest) way to go, is to install LILO on secondary partition and copy the first 512 bytes of the second partiton to the first one. Add an entry to boot.ini file to point to this new file of 512 bytes. And that's it.... ;) Regards, Venet. -------- Black holes are where God divided by zero.(Steven Wright)
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Ok first of all, it's a bad idea installing LILO on your MBR, as I'm sure you've found out yourself. :) sultan_of_6string wrote: I need to make C: my boot partition as well You can have only one boot partition, can't have more. To make a partition bootable, use fdsik. Make a Win9x boot floppy and copy fdisk.exe in there. Start your machine from the disks and run fdisk. It will give you the option of making a partiton bootable. The best (that is, safest) way to go, is to install LILO on secondary partition and copy the first 512 bytes of the second partiton to the first one. Add an entry to boot.ini file to point to this new file of 512 bytes. And that's it.... ;) Regards, Venet. -------- Black holes are where God divided by zero.(Steven Wright)
Thanks for the response. You seem to know about this so could you help me out here? I've read about this stuff of copying the first 512 bytes, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Won't it corrupt my NTFS partition? If you could give me a few points or link me to a decent article, it would be great. Plus, I got the strange feeling I'm posting on the wrong website... any suggestions? Thanks.
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Thanks for the response. You seem to know about this so could you help me out here? I've read about this stuff of copying the first 512 bytes, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Won't it corrupt my NTFS partition? If you could give me a few points or link me to a decent article, it would be great. Plus, I got the strange feeling I'm posting on the wrong website... any suggestions? Thanks.
sultan_of_6string wrote: I've read about this stuff of copying the first 512 bytes, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Won't it corrupt my NTFS partition? Nope, it won't. You are copying 512 bytes of secondary partition. To do this: boot up in linux. If you're running X-Windows open console (as root) and type dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/tmp/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 (provided /dev/hda2 is your linux partiton, if you have separate hard disk, it might be /dev/hdb1) This will copy the boot sector of the linux partition. Now, copy this file onto a floppy disk Provided that floppy disk is mounted in /mnt/floppy execute the following cp /tmp/bootsect.lnx /mnt/floppy or mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy if floppy is not mounted. (in here make sure /mnt/floppy directory exists) Boot in WinXP Copy bootsect.lnx from floppy to the C:\ Open boot.ini file. It should look something like: ----------------------------- [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" ------------------------------- Add this line to the end of boot.ini C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux Rocks" Save and Close. That's it, reboot your WinXP and there ya go. :) Note: This assumes that you've installed lilo on your secondary partition. For how to do that, you might want to read lilo man page. :):):):) Regards, Venet. -------- Black holes are where God divided by zero.(Steven Wright)
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sultan_of_6string wrote: I've read about this stuff of copying the first 512 bytes, but it doesn't seem to make sense. Won't it corrupt my NTFS partition? Nope, it won't. You are copying 512 bytes of secondary partition. To do this: boot up in linux. If you're running X-Windows open console (as root) and type dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/tmp/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 (provided /dev/hda2 is your linux partiton, if you have separate hard disk, it might be /dev/hdb1) This will copy the boot sector of the linux partition. Now, copy this file onto a floppy disk Provided that floppy disk is mounted in /mnt/floppy execute the following cp /tmp/bootsect.lnx /mnt/floppy or mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy if floppy is not mounted. (in here make sure /mnt/floppy directory exists) Boot in WinXP Copy bootsect.lnx from floppy to the C:\ Open boot.ini file. It should look something like: ----------------------------- [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" ------------------------------- Add this line to the end of boot.ini C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux Rocks" Save and Close. That's it, reboot your WinXP and there ya go. :) Note: This assumes that you've installed lilo on your secondary partition. For how to do that, you might want to read lilo man page. :):):):) Regards, Venet. -------- Black holes are where God divided by zero.(Steven Wright)
Thanks a lot. I tried that, but whenever I try to boot to RHL, the system restarts. My config is a little wierd: Partition 1: Drive C NTFS--System Partition 2: Linux /boot Partition 3: Linux root (beyond LILOs 1,024 cylinder limit) Partition 4: Linux Swap Partition 5: Drive E NTFS--Boot (don't ask why, I can't figure it out) So, I installed LILO to the /boot partition and used dd, but it didn't work. Argh! Why must NT hijack my MBR?!
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Thanks a lot. I tried that, but whenever I try to boot to RHL, the system restarts. My config is a little wierd: Partition 1: Drive C NTFS--System Partition 2: Linux /boot Partition 3: Linux root (beyond LILOs 1,024 cylinder limit) Partition 4: Linux Swap Partition 5: Drive E NTFS--Boot (don't ask why, I can't figure it out) So, I installed LILO to the /boot partition and used dd, but it didn't work. Argh! Why must NT hijack my MBR?!
Ok try this command lilo -s ./bootsect.lnx It should do the same thing as in my previous post. sultan_of_6string wrote: whenever I try to boot to RHL, the system restarts Can you get into Linux at all ? You might want to try booting from the Linux CD, if you haven't created any bootable floppies and then execute the above command. Let me know how you get on. :) Regards, Venet. -------- Black holes are where God divided by zero.(Steven Wright)
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Ok try this command lilo -s ./bootsect.lnx It should do the same thing as in my previous post. sultan_of_6string wrote: whenever I try to boot to RHL, the system restarts Can you get into Linux at all ? You might want to try booting from the Linux CD, if you haven't created any bootable floppies and then execute the above command. Let me know how you get on. :) Regards, Venet. -------- Black holes are where God divided by zero.(Steven Wright)
Thanks a lot for the reply, but I'm gonna have to wait a bit. I tried a third-party bootloader (Bootmagic or something) and it fried my MBR. XP refused to load and RHL simply restarted my system. RHL setup said that my disk geometry is messed up. Didn't know what that meant but it didn't sound good. Well, now I'm back to Win98 :( and my parents aren't too keen on Linux, so I'll just put XP on this machine and try out Linux again in college. A few days was enough to get me super-excited about projects like Gnome and Mono. Programmer's paradise! :)