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LILO BOOT crashes

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6 replies

by cupocofee

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Hi I'm a new user to linux. My computer runs on win98 and then I thought of giving linux a try. so I partitioned my hdd and installed linux.
Later I didn;t have enough space for my win98, so I deleted my linux partition. to my surprise, LILO BOOT still remained on my computer. it gave me no problems for 3 months until yesterday, my computer crashed at LILO BOOT.
it used to display, LILO BOOT: dos
now it just displays, LI
and then it crashes.
Can someone pls advise me on what to do?
Thanks a lot.

6 replies

by wiznogood

Hi,
boot from DOS/Win floppy or CD disk and do
"fdisk /mbr".
That should take care of your problem.

by wls

He's correct, the /MBR switch is how to get it back.

Basically, here's what's going on. Linux, as you surmised, lives in its own partition (as does Win98). The question is, with more than one partition, which one do you start.

LILO (the Linux Loader) can actually be used to hand control off to any partition. It's not really part of Linux (though Linux can be used to install it), and thus it actually lives on the Master Boot Record (MBR) -- the section of disk that gets control when youturn things on.

The format /mbr simply copies DOS's startup code over that area of the disk. Since Microsoft's version doesn't allow you a choice, it goes right into Windows.

You might want to someday take a look at BootMagic and/or System Commander -- these two programs do effectively the same thing: they are boot managers which let you switch between *lots* of operating systems. They handle the details you'd normally have to do manually.

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