Resetting Master Boot Record

[Mikeyb01]

I was going to try a Fdisk /mbr and fixboot. Will this do the trick or what else should I do to get Mandrakes bootloader think they used LILO and get only xp and longhorn on my master boot record. BTW, I can boot in to windows and longhorn fine.

 

[Mikeyb01]

Anyone got any tips to remove the boot loader?

 

[Fallen Kell]

You can't get into mandrake? Did you load the boot loader onto one of the hard drive's partition?

You should be able to use the dd command from a linux live CD to copy the boot loader out, and then just copy that file onto your windows side and edit the boot.ini file to add a line with that filename in it.

I forget off hand the exact dd command you need to use. Something like

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/my_lilo_boot_file count=1

This "should" copy the lilo boot area to a file called "my_lilo_boot_file". This example is if you used an IDE hard drive and installed lilo on the first drive on the IDE channel on the first partition on that drive (hd <-- stands for IDE hard drive, a <-- stands for first drive, 1 <-- stands for first partition, so if you used the second drive, with and the first partition on the IDE it would be /dev/hdb1, or if you have a second IDE channel, the it might be /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd, etc., etc.,... if it is a scsi drive, then it would be /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc....) Read up on the dd command some before you use it, you can do a lot of damage if you mix up the "if" with "of" ("input file", verses "output file" by overwritting your partition table on the drive...).

 

[Fallen Kell]

Also, the best thing to do with that dd command is to do the following:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/fd0 count=1

This will write the file to a blank floppy disk which should now be bootable and will let you boot into mandrake. Use this to simply test that it is the correct dd command and that you have the right file by just booting from the floppy and it should bring up the lilo boot loader.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Or am I just simply reading your question wrong and you want to go back to the windows boot loader? If that is the case, just use "fdisk /MBR" from a windows boot floppy (any of them should work, even a DOS 6 floppy...).