[CLUE-Tech] Stump the stiffs III: Wrecked MBRs

[David Anselmi]

Lynn Danielson wrote:
> 
> That could work with Windows 9x.  But if you're going to use lilo with
> NT/2K/XP, don't you need to use the NT boot loader?

Yes, but...  The question specified that he had a working dual boot 
config, which meant all that was needed was to run lilo or grub-install 
to rewrite the boot sector.  The NT boot loader isn't in the boot 
sector, it's chained in.

> According to the Linux+NT-Loader mini-howto you should:
[...]

This process will add lilo to the boot loaders the NT boot sector chains 
in.  So the boot sector is NT (which means you won't break it by 
reinstalling NT--but still can by installing 95 or 98).  But it means 
anytime you run lilo you have to copy the lilo boot sector to where NT 
can find it.

You can also use lilo on the boot sector, and chain in the NT loader. 
This is the howto:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/Multiboot-with-LILO.html

and here is the NT stanza of lilo.conf:

# Windows 95 stanza
other=/dev/hdb1
table=/dev/hda
loader=/boot/any_d.b
label=WindowsNT
# End Windows 95 stanza

(note that this has typos, most notably any_d.b should probably be 
os2_d.b).  The nice thing about lilo is that you can use boot=/dev/fd0 
in lilo.conf and running lilo will make you a boot floppy*.  If that 
works change the line to boot=/dev/hda (or whatever is right) and your 
hard drive will boot the same way the floppy did.

*This is not a boot floppy in the sense that it contains the kernel. 
All it will have is a boot sector that points to the kernel on your hard 
disk.  Which is kind of nice because it loads much faster than having 
the kernel on the floppy and you can hide the fact that a system is dual 
boot using lilo just by popping the floppy out.

Dave