[224] in winnt
Re: NT BIOS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Y. Ts'o)
Mon Sep 21 13:24:55 1998
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 13:24:48 -0400
From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>
To: Maurice van Putten <mvp@math.mit.edu>
Cc: ntpartners@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Maurice van Putten's message of Sun, 20 Sep 1998 13:50:01 -0400
(EDT), <199809201750.NAA29420@schauder.mit.edu>
From: Maurice van Putten <mvp@math.mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 13:50:01 -0400 (EDT)
I would like to sollicit support in repairing an NT BIOS on a Dell
notebook. It was destroyed during a Linux installation. Please, let
me know.
??? NT BIOS? What do you mean by that?
A common problem with NT and installing Linux is that NT is extremely
persnickety about the contents of the boot block. It cares about more
than just the partition table. Hence, installing LILO on the Master
Boot Record will not work. If you do this, and then you try to boot NT
from LILO, NT will blue-screen with a message about unaccessible boot
device.
Instead, what you have to do is install LILO on the boot blocks of its
partition, and then set its primary partition to be bootable.
So for example, if NT installed on the first partition (/dev/hda1), and
Linux is installed on the second partition (/dev/hda2), you'll want to
install LILO so that it is installed on /dev/hda2, and then use fdisk to
make /dev/hda2 the bootable partition.
If this is in fact your problem, fortunately LILO backs up a copy of the
boot block before it replaces it. So there should be a backed up copy
of your MBR in /boot/boot.0300. You can use the dd command to restore
it, and then edit the /etc/lilo.conf file so that it installs the LILO
boot block in /dev/hda2 (or wherever the Linux root partition happens to
be).
If you need more details on the exact Linux commands to type, let me
know....
- Ted
