[Taristin]

I finally got my install of Linux to work with my a7n8x-e deluxe. (It took bleeding forever for me to figure out how to get the eth0 to initialize correctly)

Now I have one teensy little problem:

When I resized my windows partition on my HDD to make room for linux (Mandrake Linux) it seems to have had an adverse effect on my windows install.  It begins to load normally, but then when I get the blue and white and flubbery *starting windows 2000* screen, it'll stop in te center and go to a blue screen telling me that some blasted assertion failed. Same thing happened when I replaced my motherboard... Cruddy windows.

Now, I know how to repair what's ailing windows; I'll have to overwrite the original windows install. That's not the problem. The problem I have is that if I do that, windows will rewrite the MBR and I won't be able to access my Linux install. So...

How can I restore my LiLo (or whatever mandrake uses), after I fix windows?

Is is something simple? Like using Knoppix, and getting into linux's terminal and typing stuff? Or will it be complicated and stuff?

[Taristin]

Nobody cares to share any pearls of wisdom? It can't be that difficult to do...

[Fractux]

I can't say specifics if you are using lilo, which I think is Mandrake's default bootloader, but if you are using grub I can try and help you out.

The only info I can give you at this point is to make sure you make a linux boot disk before to try to fix your Windows intall (just saying it again because I forgot one time... hehe...
)

Since you are using Mandrake, after you reboot, the only thing you should have to do is to load up the mandrake controll panel, go to the boot section, and setup the bootloader again there.

I've never done that, but I have used it to switch between bootloader's before, so I assume it will work.

Also, if you're just starting to use linux, you may want to check out Fedora Core. My bro installed it on one of our systems and said that it's been working really well.

Cheers!

[Taristin]

I tried fedora. It wouldn't... or couldn't partition my HDD, for some reason. That's the only reason I'm in mandrake.

I'll try that, if I can. thanks.

[mikhael]

I don't know what to tell you for Linux, Raa, but here's what I do with FreeBSD.

The FreeBSD bootloader (what goes in the MBR) is also written as a file (/boot/boot0). Its sole purpose is to boot the machine far enough to load a second file, called /boot/boot1. Boot1 does the real boot. I'm sure that.

Now, if you take boot1 and put it on your windows partition (mine is at c:\bsdboot.bin) and create a boot.ini entry, you can let the Win2k/WinXP boot loader handle booting to FreeBSD.

I'm not sure that LILO/GRUB/whatever under Linux handles things quite that way, though. Its worth a shot.

[Taristin]

Well, I had an epiphany. Since Mandrake managed to setup the HDDs correctly,  and I seem to have messed up the mandrake setings already, I decided just to install Fedora over mandrake. It let me make a boot disk, so perhaps I can re-install windows and then boot up the bootdisk and fix grub? *crosses fingers*

Now to figure out how to get wine to work... or at all...

[Kamikaze]

Take a Knoppix or similar cdrom-based distro, boot off of it, mount your Linux partition(s), use chroot (see chroot manual), then run lilo, and you're done.