[226] in winnt
Re: NT BIOS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rob Smyser)
Mon Sep 21 14:16:00 1998
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 14:14:09 -0400
To: Maurice van Putten <mvp@math.mit.edu>, "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>
From: Rob Smyser <smyser@MIT.EDU>
Cc: ntpartners@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.4.03.9809211354300.10590-100000@schauder.mit.edu>
You can reboot the PC from your NT floppies; when you get to the four-item
menu, do:
- Repair an NT installation
When the menu appears with four items in it, uncheck all except Examine the
Boot Sector (I think it says that). You may need your Emergency Repair
disk..
The program proceeds to check (and repair) the various pieces of the boot
sector needed to bring NT to life.
- Rob
At 01:56 PM 9/21/98 -0400, Maurice van Putten wrote:
>
>Hi Theodore,
>
>Thanks for your explanation. However, in my ignorance, I reformated
>(cleaned) both partitions, and so any backup by LINUX has been erased.
>What's next in this case?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Maurice.
>
>On Mon, 21 Sep 1998, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>
>
