[CLUE-Tech] Win98 Install After Linux

[David Anselmi]

Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> I have the need to put Win98 on laptop that is currently only Debian
> Linux.

I feel your pain.  What a shame.  Don't the Windows folks have a list 
you can ask? ;-)

> 
> It has been a few years since I have used Windows much, and even longer
> since I did dual-boot. Since Linux is already installed, Win98 is
> going to overwrite the MBR, right? So, my ability to boot Linux will
> temporarily go away. But I can just reboot with a rescue disk (those
> Debian boot CDs are super handy for that), and reinstall LILO, giving it
> the extra info about the Win98 partition.  Right?

Yes, it will overwrite the MBR.  The easiest thing to do, probably, is 
to change your lilo.conf to say boot=/dev/fd0 and run lilo before you 
start.  Then your MBR will be saved on a floppy and you can boot from it 
using the same everything else you have now.

I have a system that is Win2k and Linux.  The MBR is the original Win2k 
but I have lilo on a floppy MBR.  So I can boot from the HD (Win2k) or 
the FD (Linux) without menus or anything.  And reading just the MBR from 
the floppy is pretty quick.

Win98 might well want its partition marked "active" or "bootable" and 
then it will have to be a primary partition.  Hard to say what it will 
think about your Linux partitions and it might insist on going at the 
front of the disk.  So be careful that you're sure Win98 is showing you 
what you expect when it comes time to format.  If you mess up your 
partition table or root partition you'll need more than a lilo boot 
sector on your rescue floppy.

Finally, make sure your Win98 isn't an upgrade version or you'll need 
Win 3.1 floppies to get it to go (if you hit that, I have a bootable 
floppy image that will get you around that, I think).

Dave