" lilo gone on reinstalling win 98 on C drive"

[problemchild]

That's just too weird. I've never seen anything like that unless, as I said, there are no FAT partitions available and Windows has to make one somehow.

I partition all my boxes with either a primary FAT or NTFS partition first for Windows to live on, then a primary Linux swap, and a big extended partition that holds all my Linux and BSD stuff. Windows has never complained beyond popping up a dialog to let me know that it has detected non-FAT partitions. It has never halted the install or refused to allow me to continue. The only possibility I can think of is that Linux might be on a primary partition that's marked as active and Windows can't see its own partition. Other than that, I'm at a complete loss.

But I'm 100% sure that I'm right about this. I've done it too many times. But just to be sure I'm not losing my mind, I'm going to pull out one of my boxes I'm not using at the moment and test it. I'll post the specifics and the results in a day or two after I've had time to get around to it.

[smirc]

I partition all my boxes with either a primary FAT or NTFS partition first for Windows to live on, then a primary Linux swap, and a big extended partition that holds all my Linux and BSD stuff. Windows has never complained beyond popping up a dialog to let me know that it has detected non-FAT partitions. It has never halted the install or refused to allow me to continue. The only possibility I can think of is that Linux might be on a primary partition that's marked as active and Windows can't see its own partition. Other than that, I'm at a complete loss.

Is your install program GUI or CLI because mine isn't GUI based (ie. no pop-ups) so maybe we've got a different install program? And yes I remeber that my Linux partition was marked as active so that might be causing the problem. I might try repartitioning with a few different partitions of different types to see what the results are. You really might be on to something with the active partition idea. It would be good to find out for sure.

I usually set up dual boot systems in the following way.

1.) Fdisk the drive into two main sections one for Windows and one for *nix
2.) Install Windows onto the first partition
3.) Use disk druid or fdisk to repartition the second partition into further partitions
4.) Install *nix onto the remaining partitions

I usally have the following partitions:
/, /boot, /home, /var, /usr and a swap partition

That's the way I've always done it and I've never gotton around this problem. If you figure it out, that would be BONZA!

[problemchild]

And yes I remeber that my Linux partition was marked as active so that might be causing the problem.

Whatever partition Windows lives on must be primary and active. Otherwise, you'll get all kinds of screwey stuff. That could very well be it.

1.) Fdisk the drive into two main sections one for Windows and one for *nix

What partitioning tool are you using for this? I assume you mean the second one is extended and you later create logical drives within it. If that's the case,Windows fdisk and (I think) Partition Magic will create an extended partition of type f, which is reported as "Win95 Ext'd", whereas Linux fdisk will create a type 85 "Linux extended" partition. I always use Linux partitioning tools - Mandrake's DiskDrake, to be exact. Maybe Windows is reading the partition type and thinking it belongs to Windows?

Maybe it's a start to figuring out what's going on.

[VictorKaum]

I agree with Problemchild, there's no prob installing Win98 and Linux.

I once got the error smirc had, I think this was due to a wrong active partition in combnination with wrong partitioning tools like problemchild suggested. I always make my linux partitions with a tool in Linux.

About the original problem, reboot with a linux (redhat) bootdisk (if you know your partition info) or with your own emergency disk and rewrite your lilo to the MBR asd described above.

[roswell1329]

Another thing you might want to try when installing Windows98SE, smirc, is fdisk/format your drive first, then use a boot disk to start your computer with some CD drivers (don't let the 98SE CD boot for you). Then go into the 98SE disk and run setup.exe manually. The 98SE CD may be running some additional autoloading batch files before it actually hits setup.exe that may be checking partition information. As mentioned above, it could also be that Windows was complaining about not having the active partition. I've been through several dual boot installs and haven't seen the error your talking about running just the setup.exe. Hope that works for you!

[Toucan Jack]

Before I cured my Windows addiction, I had the same problem a couple of times. Win98 needs to be clean installed about every six months to maintain some semblance of stability and performance. I cured the loss of bootloader problem by installing a second hard drive. First I clean installed Win98 on a single drive. Then I strapped that drive as Slave and installed the new drive as Master. I installed Linux on the new drive and had no problem dual booting. When Win98 got flaky again, I simply disconnected HDA and restrapped HDB as Master and reinstalled Win98. It's now been over a year since I did that, and the last time I booted Win98 was six months ago when the Linux-illiterate ISP techs installed my ADSL connection.

I strongly recommend two hard drives for a dual boot system. Then when you cure the M$ addiction, you don't have to reinstall Linux. My second hard drive is going into a reborn PC next week.

[ArmyOfOne]

I know with Mandrake you can boot-up the CD and choose "rescue" and tell it to re-install LILO.

[midnightrain]

dear , whenever u install any linux system always create a bootable floppy of linux.
and after installing win98 , boot system with that bootable floppy .
and write that Lilo.config or linux.config again . its as simple as it is .
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