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hello :P freinds
well i have a problem,,,, so herei go...
well i had win98se and RH linux 7.2 on my system,,,
due to some internal problem on windows i reformatted my c drive and again reinstalled windows 98 se ,, now to my horror now LILO prompt doesnt comes on boot time and it stratight awayloads win98,,,
can any1 out here suggest how to getback LILO prompt back without uninstalling RHlinux7.2 ,,,
for ur info i have installed linux on MBR
any help is highly welcome
thanx in advance
Windows likes to think that it should be the ONLY OS you're running on a machine, so it overwrites your MBR. Did you make an emergency linux boot disk when you installed RH like a good sysadmin? :D Use that to get back into your linux partition, and then just reconfigure LILO for your new Windows partition (you may not even have to change anything...Window's keeps a pretty standard install) and then run LILO again. If you didn't make a boot disk when you installed RH, you may still be able to create one if you know the partition information. For help on creating the boot disk, take a look at:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bootdisk-HOWTO/index.html
Good luck!
If you don't have a Red Hat boot disk, you can also probably use a Slackware install disk to access it as well. May not be pretty, but it will get the job done.
The best way to avoid that in the future (though it's kind of late for that now) is to create a third partition on your hard drive. Create the third partition as the C drive and make it small (I generally say about 20 MB or so, though you don't even need that much). Then install Windows to one of the large partitions and Linux to the other. That way, all of your boot information will be stored on the C partition, so even if you format and reinstall either the Windows or Linux partition, you will be able to access the newly installed version.
AJ
That won't prevent Windows from overwriting the master boot record of the hard drive, which is what causes the problem. Lilo doesn't store any boot information on C drive; it's all in the MBR. AFAIK, there is no way to prevent it from happening if you re-install Windows after Linux. Best thing is just to keep a Linux boot disk handy.
I was always kind of partial to the OS/2 boot manager, which used a primary partition to intercept the boot process and then hand it off to the appropriate bootable partition. No messing with MBRs, so no amount of Windows reinstalls could hurt it. Just mark it active again with fdisk and you're back in business. No muss, no fuss. :D
The reason LILO does not load from the MBR anymore is because it has been overwritten by the Win98 boot loader as has already been stated in posts above. Windows is greedy and overwrites the MBR whenever you do an new install. There is no way around this. This is the reason you always install Windows first on a dual boot system.Quote:
well i had win98se and RH linux 7.2 on my system,,,
due to some internal problem on windows i reformatted my c drive and again reinstalled windows 98 se ,, now to my horror now LILO prompt doesnt comes on boot time and it stratight awayloads win98
The other unfortunate thing about Win98 is that when you do a new install it won't let you use partitions that aren't FAT32. It forces you to reformat these partitions to FAT32 thus erasing anything that was already there. Don't you love MS? ;)
Yes this can be done from a Linux boot disk as stated above but it should be pointed out that if you want Redhat back you're going to have to reinstall the whole OS anyway because you killed it when you reinstalled Win98. So even if you reinstalled LILO it would only be able to boot Win98 because your Redhat install is gone. It would probably be quicker to just reinstall Linux rather than messing around with LILO anyway. You can install RH 7.2 in about 10 minutes once you've got the hang if it. Good luck. :)Quote:
can any1 out here suggest how to getback LILO prompt back without uninstalling RHlinux7.2 ,,,
for ur info i have installed linux on MBR
NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.......................Quote:
Yes this can be done from a Linux boot disk as stated above but it should be pointed out that if you want Redhat back you're going to have to reinstall the whole OS anyway because you killed it when you reinstalled Win98. So even if you reinstalled LILO it would only be able to boot Win98 because your Redhat install is gone.
Sorry, but this is wrong. The Red Hat install is untouched and perfectly fine. All you have to do is boot from a floppy and run /sbin/lilo. That's it.
How do you figure Red Hat is gone? Windows hasn't touched any of the partitions it's installed on.
Dude, if you installed Win98SE after installing Linux and you managed to keep your Linux partitions intact I would very much like to know how? Every time I've tried to do this Windows either gives you the option to:Quote:
NO, NO, NO, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.......................
Sorry, but this is wrong. The Red Hat install is untouched and perfectly fine. All you have to do is boot from a floppy and run /sbin/lilo. That's it.
How do you figure Red Hat is gone? Windows hasn't touched any of the partitions it's installed on.
1) Format non FAT32 partitions/drives
2) Quit the install
I'm not saying you're wrong but if you know how to get around this problem, please share it with us.
I've installed both Windows and Linux (and OS/2) literally hundreds - if not thousands - of times over the last 10 years, and Windows has never complained about the existence of non-FAT partitions as long as there is a FAT partition for Windows to go on. The only time you would see that message is if you don't have an appropriate FAT partition available and have no free space. If you're seeing that, then you most likely have your drives improperly partitioned - like putting Linux on the first partition or something. What does your partitioning scheme look like?
Weird, I always get this message and I've had plenty of practise installing OSs myself and I've never found a way around this problem. I'll give an example to make things clearer.Quote:
I've installed both Windows and Linux (and OS/2) literally hundreds - if not thousands - of times over the last 10 years, and Windows has never complained about the existence of non-FAT partitions as long as there is a FAT partition for Windows to go on. The only time you would see that message is if you don't have an appropriate FAT partition available and have no free space. If you're seeing that, then you most likely have your drives improperly partitioned - like putting Linux on the first partition or something. What does your partitioning scheme look like?
I had an Intel box with a 30GB HD split straight down the middle with 15GB Win98 and 15GB Linux (Redhat, Slackware, Suse...take your pick, I tried a few of them). I decided to reinstall Win98 because it was having display problems and I got sick of messing around with the driver configs.
So I chuck in my official (I can't believe I actually paid it) Win98SE CD and reboot to reinstall windows. The install program goes ahead and does its thing but before the actual install starts you get a message like, "Unrecognised format on drive whatever". The only options are too reformat to FAT32 or exit the install. One of my friends at work who is an experienced sys admin says exactly the same thing.
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.
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.Quote:
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.
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!
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.Quote:
And yes I remeber that my Linux partition was marked as active so that might be causing the problem.
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?Quote:
1.) Fdisk the drive into two main sections one for Windows and one for *nix
Maybe it's a start to figuring out what's going on.
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.
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!
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.
I know with Mandrake you can boot-up the CD and choose "rescue" and tell it to re-install LILO.
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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