mkliloboot default install location
Forum: DSL Ideas and Suggestions
Topic: mkliloboot default install location
started by: Gilbert Ashley
Posted by Gilbert Ashley on Dec. 08 2003,23:04
John, I see another posting from someone who has lost their bootsector due to the default install of lilo. I think mkliloboot script should be changed to install to a floppy by default or at least give people a choice. People who are new to linux are not going to intuitively realize that this script is going to wipe out their ability to boot their regular OS, and some may not have any idea how to restore their MBR,or any way to do it. Some folks might be pretty mad about it.
Posted by ackkkkkkkkkkkkkkk on Dec. 19 2003,17:41
yes...I found that ou on my laptop 
... when I try to boot xp it says that system32/hal.dll is missing or corrupted, 
Can I repair this withoug losing all my files on my windows partition? If not I guess I'll have to get my wireless LAN working so I can transfer everything really important over to this computer and then reinstall it after I fix my disk. Well I'm gonna go try using my partition magic boot floppy to see if I can do anything with that, anyways,any help would be much appreciated
Posted by MBR repair on Dec. 19 2003,18:02
Grab a Win 98 bootdisk, boot with it & run "fdisk /mbr" w/out the quotes.That should restore the MBR & Windoze should boot normaly.
www.bootdisk.com
Posted by aaaccccckkkkkkkk on Dec. 19 2003,18:06
Can I use the XP CD for this, or does it need to be 98?
Posted by ackkk on Dec. 19 2003,20:35
Ok I'm making a bootdisk, wish me luck 
Posted by acccckkkk on Dec. 19 2003,20:49
Also, if I were to add a line to the windows boot file, such as:multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)="Damn Small Linux"
Would that be able to boot DSL ?
Posted by AAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKK on Dec. 19 2003,21:41
I booted with the win98 boot disk, typed ctrl-F5 to go to the command prompt, typed fdisk /mbr, and nothing really seemed to happening. Is this because dos can't see ntfs partitions? Any other suggestions
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 19 2003,22:33
Did you reboot to see if it restored your boot record? There is not a whole lot of activity after the fdisk /mbr, although your disk drive light should blip for a milisecond.I seem to remember using an old Win98SE boot disk to restore the boot record. I dont think the boot record is NTFS.
Posted by accckkk on Dec. 19 2003,22:47
Yeah, I rebooted afterwords and got the same message about a corrupted dll, although...lilo didn't boot I believe so I can't run dsl from hd now either 
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 19 2003,23:02
Well, my knowlege was a bit behind on MS OS's. Apparently the boot sector setup is different for an NTFS disk than a FAT system. You need to restore your MBR with the fdisk of whatever type system is on the windows partition.You can also remove the liloboot with the command
lilo -u
That is supposed to return your boot record to what it was.
Posted by Ack on Dec. 19 2003,23:17
Ok, I'll see if using lilo -u does anything, and thn I'll see what I can do with the XP Cd and/or XP boot floppy, if I can't think of anything else then I guess I'll have to salvage any important files I can with DSL and send them by LAN(if I can get that working) to this comp(my parents) and then reinstall windows.One more question, if lilo doesn't load, how can I boot into the HD install instead of the CD?
Thanks everyone for your help, I'll tell you what happens
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 19 2003,23:26
What operating system was on the disk when you started?Can you boot to either DSL or Windoze now from the HD?
Don't to anything drastic, your files are all still there.
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 19 2003,23:31
How does "lilo -u" work? - When lilo is installed on the disk it stores the previous boot sector (its very small) in a file called /boot/boot.0300 When you run "lilo -u" it reinstalls this code to the MBR of your hard drive.
Posted by Ack on Dec. 19 2003,23:40
I had XP installed originally, after that stopped booting I coul boot from lilo to dsl, but after doing fdisk /mbr it no longer loads lilo, but ries to boot windows automatically, and gets the corrupt dll message,
Posted by Ack on Dec. 19 2003,23:42
When I tried lilo -u from running from the cd it said something about needimg to configure a file
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 19 2003,23:52
Ok. Here is what I would do. First locate or make a winXP boot disk. Then use it to fdisk /mbr the hard drive. This will restore the boot sector for windoze. If that lets you boot into windoze you have your data saved.
Next boot DSL from the CD and try the mkliloboot again. Be sure when you answer the question about where to put the boot stuff you give it the partition where you installed DSL, not the windows partition. You can use cfdisk from the CD to see whats on the HD partitions.
Posted by Ack on Dec. 20 2003,00:01
Ok, I'll make a boot disk now, thanks for your help If I do the mklilo thing again, and set it to the right partition, will this set the dsl partition as the active partition?
Posted by Ack on Dec. 20 2003,00:12
What boot disk do I need? I looked at bootdisk.com and the one bootdisk they have looks like the installationcd distributed over 6 floppies, and I already have the installation CD :?
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 20 2003,00:13
I have installed and uninstalled DSL more times than I care to count. All I know is that whenever I have told mkliloboot the wrong partition (the windoze one) it has screwed my boot sector. I am running winXP and when it happened I had to use a winXp boot disk to do the fdisk/mbr thing.Its very important that you tell mkliloboot that your root partition is where ever you installed DSL. Its also important that before you run mkliloboot that the boot sector be as it was before you started this DSL thing -- thus get winXP's boot back before you go any further if possible. That will enable mkliloboot to properly back up the file /boot/boot.0300
Posted by Ack on Dec. 20 2003,00:27
Ok, I understand what you mean but I'm not sure where to find an XP bootdisk that will let me use a command prompt, maybe I can from the setup cd I'll have to try.
Posted by Ack on Dec. 20 2003,00:29
Or do I need this: "File Recovery Disk. Read/Copy Files From XP NTFS Volumes To FAT32/16 Drives"(*from boot disk .com")
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 20 2003,02:38
I don't know. It sounds like you may need the winXP CD which you can boot into the recovery mode. This link may help< http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000490.htm >
That failing I would try www.microsoft.com at the knowledgebase search.
Posted by Ack on Dec. 20 2003,03:23
Ok thanks again
Posted by Ack on Dec. 20 2003,21:44
Ok, I think I need to use the recovery console thing from the xp cd, but my admin password isn't working, unless I somehow changed it then forgot :s
Posted by Gilbert Ashley on Dec. 22 2003,00:36
What a mess, no? I've installed a few XP and W2K systems when I worked at a computer store but never really done the bootsector repair. The bootsector for ntfs is a file called bootsector.bin as I recall. This is what has to be restored. I did learn this though and If you have to reinstall your win system be sure and do this. Create a small first partition (at least 1 MB, preferably 10MB). Create this boot partition as a FAT32 partition. The proceed with your regular install on a ntfs partition. Since XP/W2K must install the bootsector to the first partition it will install bootsector.bin and the ntloader there. This way if you ever have problems you can take any DOS floppy and go in there and fix things. And make a backup of bootsector.bin in case you ever need to restore it. For now you'll have to try the recovery console. Every time I installed DSL it would wipe out my MBR. But since I use Win98 I was always able to repair it. Before restoring it I would run liloconfig in dsl in order to install lilo TO A FLOPPY. This 'lilo to the MBR' mkliloboot thingy is a bad way to make friends!
Posted by AcKK on Dec. 23 2003,01:56
Ok, I'm ok now, I booted from the XP setup disk, deleted my linux partition, replaced it with an ntfs partition, installed a copy of xp to that partition, from the new version of xp I replaced the hal.dll, and altered the boot.ini to have a line pointing to partition 1(my original XP) instead of 2, the new version of XP, and now I'll get rid of that second windows partition and probably try to put linux on it again, hopefully without screwing it up again 
Posted by DrWatt on Dec. 23 2003,02:35
Glad to hear you got it going again ack. Good luck with reinstall.
Posted by Ack on Dec. 23 2003,03:48
Thanks everyone for helping me, I decided to install a larger version of linux since I have the space anyways, and can I use the normal windows boot loader to boot a linux installation?
Posted by Ack on Dec. 23 2003,22:44
Ok got lilo to work, I had about 30MB of unformatted space still at the start of my HD, it was a differnt distro but anyways, I formatted it to fat before using the lilo install thing and now I can boot xp from lilo
Posted by Modrak on Feb. 10 2004,21:08
WIN XP CD RESTORE UTILITY:c:> fixmbr