Urza9814 Posted January 27, 2005 Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 :cry: I spent a few hours yesterday and the day before, and the past 4 hours today trying to fix windoze because my mom needs it to check her email and do her taxes and crap...all that time...finally got it fixed...it booted up fine, I went to reinstall Lilo, and guess what? once I did that it set me right back to where I started. And I also have discovered that the 'restore windows bootloader' option on the rescue function of the mandrake CD doesn't do a damn thing. You hit it, you select a lilo, and it sends you back to the list without doing a single damn thing. This will be the fourth time I've installed Windoze today, and I've done Linux 3 (and believe I'll have to do that once more to fix this too...)...and I am so mad right now...I had it! :angry2: I'm not even gonna attempt to reinstall the bootloader if I get it fixed again...I can't deal with this crap for another week or two...I'd rather deal with the trouble of running windoze for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted January 27, 2005 Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 add this to your /etc/lilo.conf at the end other=/dev/hda1 label=Windows replacing /dev/hda1 with your windows partition. then run "/sbin/lilo -v" as root, and you'll magically have windows back on lilo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted January 27, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 No, windows is on lilo, but when I select it, I just get a black DOS-type screen (you know the one...it pops up while windoze boots for a second....with the blinking cursor...)... and now I can't install again...well, I can't install without formatting my hard drive...which would mean I'd need to get my backups back offa linux, which would mean I'd have to reinstall lilo, which is what screwed this all up the first time. I was just thinking though...even though it worked the first time...and I can still access it through Linux (well, last time I checked)...could it be a hard drive failure? I mean, I'm using a 5 year old 15GB compaq hdd...was never top of the line to begin with...so...that a possibility? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted January 27, 2005 Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 i dont know... can't you leave your system running for 10 minutes lol, you're always changing something and messing it up.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted January 27, 2005 Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 Congratulations! Most of us had to work to get rid of Windows, you did it without trying! IMO this is the most important new feature Mandrake seem to have built into 10.1 (aka the WindozeBreaker). Fantastic, this Linux thingy gets more useful by the day... :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted January 27, 2005 Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 i have a tips and trick on how to duel boot without a linux bootloader in the mbr. Search Tips and Tricks for ntldr or ntloader...I think. At minimum...use grub and ditch li lo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted January 27, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2005 lol...I can't ditch windoze though...my mom will kill me (not to mention the few games I play on it...I would get cedega, but after that time demo thing that couldn't run a single game.....) and it's not a new feature in 10.1...I'm using 9.2 :-P but Im thinking it's harddrive failure... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urza9814 Posted January 28, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 aurgh...I tried to install it from a different comp...and now im beginning to think the CD is screwed up... :S Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 I am with BVC on this one. Of every one of the 5 or 6 times that my Linux activity screwed up my Windows installs, I was using Lilo. NEVER in this past 3 yrs have I succeeded in screwing up Windows while using Grub as boot. Lilo maybe the earliest boot program but despite a newer Gui it is now A-Rex.. The other thing is that after making any changes in Lilo and saving them you have to carry out a further step for it to become effective. In Grub you make your changes and save it and you are done. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 Actually, upon rereading all the posts it seems what Lilo is screwing up is the MBR. This is what LILO is great at and the reason why I abandoned Lilo those years ago. I think what you need to do is to wipe the MBR entirely by using a Win98 boot disk and at the prompt type in fdisk /mbr (please note the space) There are other methods of clearing the MBR that others might like to suggest. I hope this helps. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 I am with BVC on this one. Of every one of the 5 or 6 times that my Linux activity screwed up my Windows installs, I was using Lilo. NEVER in this past 3 yrs have I succeeded in screwing up Windows while using Grub as boot. Lilo maybe the earliest boot program but despite a newer Gui it is now A-Rex.. Possibly but I can never work out how to use grub, neither have I ever seen lilo damage an install. If its pointed at the MBR it walways writes to the MBR.. I have never seen it damage a partition... of course if someone can't use it then it can prevent a partition booting but .. then so can anything. The other thing is that after making any changes in Lilo and saving them you have to carry out a further step for it to become effective. In Grub you make your changes and save it and you are done. and that's a good thing? No conformation, no ability to write a config but not activate it? hmmm is that really true? I was planning on learning grub because it makes some nice splash screens etc. but if you can't edit the config without saving the canhes and commiting I don't think I'll bother. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 I am certainly no geek and I do all my changes to grub via MCC and not by just altering Grubs files. The saving of the changes is done there. It cannot be an accident that with all my inexperienced experimentation with Mandrake that while I often screw it up, while using grub it has NEVER screwed up the MBR. I have still been able to boot into Windows when I could not boot into Mandrake any longer. Actually I do not see the need for changes to the boot program (Lilo or Grub) for the average user and selecting GRUB in MCC is no harder than selecting LILO. I don't know about splash screens for Grub. I have not heard of them. I have heard of and use Boot Themes which is also selectable in MCC. There is an RPM available for extra Boot Themes as well. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 The splash screens are really cool and GRUB lets you make em interactive. For instance on the kanotix boot it allows you to change resolution etc. I was pretty impressed .. which is why I thought I'd have a look. The autosaving is worrying though... in true linux hacking fashion I usually have a lilo.conf.emergency and lilo.conf.floppy etc. in my /etc/ and then I can boot from a floppy or bootable Cd and then chroot to that partition... since I usually have more than one distro on a PC I have safe lilo.conf's in each /etc ... saved my life more than once.... :D however I don't have any windows (nor any wiosh for it) so i can't say if it would provide a winBlows backup. MBR or not... I find a text file convenient for lazyness too. Sometime I take the lilo.conf from one distro and cut/paste the relevant parts into another! I'd be interested what the grub experts do with this .... I like the idea and Ive seen some great stuff done with grub but its currently worrying me! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 grub only needs one config file and can do it all from there, but then, so can't lilo? I guess I don't understand what you are doing/asking. :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted January 28, 2005 Report Share Posted January 28, 2005 grub only needs one config file and can do it all from there, but then, so can't lilo? I guess I don't understand what you are doing/asking. :unsure: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well with lilo I keep a single lilo.conf which has everything in it but sometimes when I mess about I end up with a non bootable system ... (like trying to move the ancillary files about like the boot message etc or initrd's...) So in eachj install I always have a simple working lilo.... the safest etc. and if I mess up I can just chroot and copy /etc/lilo.conf.emergency /etc/lilo.conf and rerun lilo and then I have a working bootable distro... From what John was saying there was no intervening file? or i may have misunderstood... ?? since now you say there is a conf file... I'd previously looked but not found ione but its not something I'd tried extensively. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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