Guest mandrake?? Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 Hello all I installed mandrake community from a dvd copy of LF magazine. The DVD didn't boot direct but I booted through burning a boot disk to a cd(I don't have a floppy drive) The install of mandrake 10 "terrified" me because (I don't know what I did) it offered me an express setup and didn't let me made choices. After installing lilo at mbr , it didn't boot windows XP . I tried to uninstall lilo so I could boot to xp by issuing lilo -U . But still i didn't boot to XP from bios.I put a dos disk , gave the command fdisk /mbr but now bios message is that can't find any operating system. Any suggestion how to fix this thing ? I don't want to reinstall windows xp. Also I want to keep mandrake install . Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 DONT PANICK .... Its not uncommon and we fixed this one 50x before !!! Oh.... WELCOME easiest way is to reboot fromt he Cd you wrote but im confused you say you dont have a floppy drive but you put in a DOS disk. is that a CD or did you retro fit a floppy ?? From the install Cd you should be able to hit F1 and go to RESCUE. check the FAQ's here on lilo and rescue... if nothing hleps or you want anything explaining post it back... theres a link to the FAQ's in my sig :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feralertx Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 This is a known bug that was in MDK 10 CE and made it into 10 OE... inexplicably All you gotta do is go into your BIOS and change the Hard Disk setting from AUTO to LBA. Try it and see if it works for you... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mandrake?? Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 (edited) but im confused you say you dont have a floppy drive but you put in a DOS disk. is that a CD or did you retro fit a floppy ?? It was a dos boot cd, that I used to issue the command fdisk /mbr. My problem is that I don't have lilo again and if I install it again, can Xp be bootable again? If my bios doesn't support LBA , what else should I do. On Red Hat mailing list there was a solution but can I apply ot for Mandrake? The solution was issuing a command in Linux : sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H240 /dev/hda Any idea? Edited May 28, 2004 by mandrake?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 (edited) I think its just a bug in the installer. Once its installed it should be FINE In effect what you do is rerun the lilo after bootuing from a CD then mounting the filesystem and using a chroot (which means it then changes where it thinks its installed from) You dont Reinstall lilo, you use lilo to rewrite the MBR. Ive written this lots of times and i think theres a FAQ... if you cant find it ill dig but its likely to be more detailed than i can type right now. Ill look into the sfdisk thing... I wouldnt do it unless you understand it.... let me and a few of the other here have a look before you do anything drastic! edits: this is the GAQ concerning lilo and rescue mode FAQ Edited May 28, 2004 by Gowator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest axdx Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 (edited) Assuming you didn't overwrite/erase the windows partition, you can do the following: 1. Boot the PC using the Windows XP cd-rom 2. When setup starts, choose "repair using recovery console" (or something similar, can't remember exactly) When you are in the recovery console: 3. type "fixmbr" (to rewrite the MBR with windows boot loader. Lilo will dissapear) 4. type "exit" (logout, restart) You might also have to (in recovery console): - type "bootcfg /rebuild" (updates boot.ini, neccessary if the windows partition number has changed) - type "fixboot <drive>" (fix the boot record on windows system drive ex. "fixboot c:") Edited May 28, 2004 by axdx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feralertx Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 (edited) If my bios doesn't support LBA IF?? Are you sure it doesnt ?? Have you check it or are you just guessing ?? I have a quite old machine and it does have this option. Double check for your own benefit since it might be the only way to sort out your problem, dont believe me? Check out this post: Can't boot on XP (fat32) after install mdk 10 :deal: :deal: Edited May 28, 2004 by feralertx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mandrake?? Posted May 28, 2004 Report Share Posted May 28, 2004 Well thanks everybody ! I got to check if my bios supports LBA and it should because I have an Epox nforce motherboard. I will try the solutions this afternoon. (CET time in my country) But to be honest this a weired thing and will put many xp users away from trying the beautifull Mandrake 10. Well I saw it for 30 minutes in my computer and I loved till I tried to boot to XP partition. I hope I can boot to xp again cause I don't want to spend an entire day to install programs and reboot again. I have to play some games there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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