[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux Is Screwing Up Windows ;-)

[Kevin McMillan]

Jaime Villela wrote:

> Problem:  I'm trying to install Linux on my system and it keeps screwing
> up the partitioning so that Win98 will no longer boot.

This is a question that seems to come up quite frequently. And is discussed
in a number of FAQs. But here goes.


> Setup:  One 4 GB hard drive has Win98 along with seperate partitions for
> swap, data and applications.  One 1 GB holds both linux swap and root
> partitions.

1) you must run LBA mode for your drive, if the Linux boot image will
reside above the 1024th sector.
2) if you already have Winblows (anything) installed, during the Linux
install, DO NOT INSTALL LILO to the MBR, but to the partition which holds
the boot image.
3) if you have installed Linux, and screwed up your MBR, you can
    a. boot with a Windows rescue disk, and from the command prompt, type
the command "fdisk /mbr" to restore the MBR.
    b. reinstall Windblows ?, which will automatically fix (?) the MBR, but
is somewhat of an overkill.   (?)Windblows always screws up the MBR, but no
one seems to complain about that.
4) if you already have both OS's installed, and manage to restore the MBR,
then.....
    To avoid having to reinstall Linux, use the rescue disk, boot to Linux
, and reconfigure LILO to use the boot.img in the /root or /boot
directory.  Whichever you used
5) go to  http://www.xosl.org/  , and download the latest version. I have
used this boot utility for 4 years, with NO PROBLEMS. The fact that it is
free and licensed under the GPL should be of some interest to some here.
6) READ THE DOCUMENTATION that comes with XOSL before you do anyting else.
    a. here is a short synopsis of what to do
        1.create a new directory on your winblows drive, I call mine XOSL.
and is at C:\XOSL
        2. extract all of the downloaded files of XOSL to the new directory

        3. reboot into dos ( command prompt )
        4. enter the directory with cd  XOSL
        5. type install, and  follow on screen prompts
        6. reboot
        7. setting up XOSL is as easy as choosing a partition, naming it,
saving the data, and rebooting to the menu.

> Description:  I used to have Caldera 2.3 on my linux drive and both OSes
> booted with no problems.  Last night I decided to wipe away Caldera and
> give Mandrake 7.0 a chance (bad move).  The installation went okay but
> when I tried to boot to Win98 (via Boot Magic) I got a "non-system disk"
> error.  The error would only go away when I deleted the Linux partitions
> on the second drive.  Just to make sure, I then tried to install
> StormLinux 2000.  Same deal.

It doesn't matter. I have successfully installed and used XOSL to boot to
Winows 95, 98, NT 4.0, BeOS, Debian, RedHat, FreeBSD, and several other
versions of Linux. I have had up to 4 OS's simultaniously on different
drives and/ or partitions,,,,, experimenting. ; ) NT by far is the most
difficult to setup, but can be done if you RTM.
I use XOSL with almost every install of Linux, when an individual wants a
dual boot system.

>
> Has anyone else had this problem?  Does anyone else have two OSes on two
> drives?  If so, how did you do it?

One last comment, I do own various copies of Partition Magic since version
3. I have since I discovered and used XOSL instead of the boot utility
included wtih PM, because IMHO, it works better.
If I have not been quite clear or concise enough, please feel free to
contact me. If someone has a 'better way of doing it" ,  then good, let us
all know

Kevin