AAUURGH!

[plati]

XP *will* screw with the bootloader, but lilo is easily restored with the first MDK cd following the steps cannonfodder gave.

 

If you are looking for another distro to try out, I found fedora to be quite easy to setup and maintain, with tools such as up2date and its apt and yum reposotrie access makes it easy to find things.

[iphitus]

"Linux doesn't break, I break Linux."

yea...I know that...I'm not really blaming mandy...well, ok, I am...lol...I didn't know XP screwed with the partitions...but still, windoze always says the seconds harddrive doesn't exist...how can it mess with the partitions on it???

 

I'm just sick of having to reinstall every weekend! And, this is the first time it's been something I've done with windoze. I installed win98 and it didn't cause any problems with mandrake. I go from 10.0 to 9.2 and it doesn't work...I have to open up my comp, pull the plug on the cd drive and switch install CDs halfway through to get it to work for some reason...then I try to add a second install of it on my first hard drive and it screws up the bootloader...I fix that but it says something about 'try passing init='...so I reinstall w/o formatting, so hopefully I can keep my data. That somehow sets the permissions of all the config files, and ONLY the config files in my /home to root only. To top it all off, Konqueror's 'apply changes to subfolders and files' doesn't seem to work so I have to fix 'em one folder at a time...AURGH!!!

Stop screwing with it if you dont want to reinstall.

 

You are breaking it, not linux.

 

 

And dont ever do an upgrade, they are risky.

[Sarissi]

All Windows versions, and, I think MS-DOS, overwrite the MBR. I install lilo/grub to the root superblock (first sector of root partition aka /boot). I use System Commander Personal Edition (comes with Partition Commander) as my boot manager. This way I have no problems after re-installing Windows. Fortunately, I don't have XP.

[Michel]

I reinstalled windows xp on a dual-boot-setup of a friend(xp and linux). I tscrewed up the bootloader good. Nothing would even start any more. Could only boot from cd and floppy. I didn't get a chance to repair it (I tried it, but I first had to look up some info sinc ethis was teh first tilme I encountered this prolem ...heart about it ?? But they took it out of my hands ...), although fixmbr didn't seem to work ..mayeb I did domething wrong ... But my next step was trying fixmbr, fixboot again and then using maybe freedos of win 98-boot disk if you hav it and do fdisk /mbr (or something) or format /mbr. They took it to someone else .. (shop or man), but it seems he just said they needed a new harddrive. I know the harddrive was still intact ...but the mbr was screwed up and I can't believe you can't restore your mbr or clean everything of the harddisk and reinstall everything again.

Reinstalling lilo wouldn't work.

 

Personal: I really wanted to try to repair it...since the man had the pc for a week and was away to an other country during a period of that week, I certainly wanted to try it ..., but ok ...they have a new harddrive now.

 

I would appreciate it if anyone could write a good how-to an how installing windows after linux will screw your up your mbr ...really low-level if possible and how to repair it (most important). I think this is an important issue ...

Edited May 10, 2004 by Michel

[Sarissi]

I would say a low level format, but, notebooks have special partitions on them. The Low level format utility is from the manufacturer of the HDD. It writes ASCII Zeroes to the entire HDD, and you will lose all data. The bigger the HDD, the longer it will take. This is a last resort to attempt to restore your HDD(s) to functionality.

[Urza9814]

Hey, I relize now it was my mistake, etc...etc... I just got really frustrated...sorry

Anyways, anyone know of any way I can prevent this from happening again? Like, I think I can fix it on my own...I'm gonna reinstall and just not format the home partition, and if that doesn't work, I'll just backup and go to 10.0...I got more RAM, and now have 320MB, so I think 10.0 should run ok now. What I want to know though is any way that I can mess with other distros on my windoze hard drive without the risk of screwing up mandrake....AKA, so way it won't mess with the other hard drive or the bootloader in any way. If it screws with the hard drive it's on however, I don't care, because it's windoze, I only use it for games anways (which I do a lot more now that I can actually run them with my new RAM chip) :-P

[Sarissi]

Get System Commander or Partition Commander, which comes with System Commander Personal Edition. Then install the Linux Boot Loader into the first sector of the Root partition.

 

Then, if you have to re-install Windows, just install SC or SCPE again, and you are all set.

 

SC/SCPE does not require a special partition (unlike Boot Magic. at least the one that came with Partition Magic 3.0).

 

SCPE cannot boot from a Logical partion in an extended partition, while SC can. Both, in the current version, can boot from ext2, ext3, and ReiserFS.

 

I use Partition Commander to handle my partitioning, and use SCPE as my boot manager. I have no problems, and no worries about the MBR getting screwed.

Edited May 11, 2004 by Sarissi