MBR overwritten

Forum: HD Install
Topic: MBR overwritten
started by: web14228

Posted by web14228 on April 18 2007,12:33

Hi,

I booted my PC using the DSL live CD. I was under the assumption that the CD would NOT make any changes to the hard drive unless I chose the install option (which I didn't).

When I removed the CD and tried to reboot, I got a "system not found" error. I later fixed this by restoring the MBR from the hard drive installation CD I had, and booted OK.

The question I have is: Is that normal behavior? Does the DSL CD always rewrite the MBR, even without using the install option?

I do have another PC that I will be using as a dedicated DSL machine, I just need to know what went wrong in this one instance, in case it comes up again in the future.

Thanks all!

Posted by mikshaw on April 18 2007,13:28

That's not normal behavior, and I don't see any way that it could have happened without you doing something, maybe unintentionally. You don't necessarily need to run a DSL install script. If you run the lilo or grub-install command you can overwrite the mbr. I'm not sure, but installing a grub extension might do this as well (I'm not entirely clear on how the most recent one was built).