[nmglug] Argghhh!!! I hosed my MBR

[Tim Emerick]

I updated my Win98 partition on my dual boot debian/Windows machine to
Windows XP.  I expected XP to take over the MBR but didn't realize how
difficult it was to have LILO take it all back.  I'm now stuck with a dead
machine.

Partititions are all intact, checked them with knoppix.

I tried booting knoppix and following some directions on restoring the MBR so
that LILO could handle the bootup.  Got lost since most of the directions I
could find were redhat related and I'm running debian.  I also got lost since
everytime I tried to run lilo it was looking at the knoppix generated
/etc/lilo.conf that resided on the ram disk.

Found some generic linux instructions on running lilo from a virtual terminal
using the install CD (I used my Debian/Testing netinst CD).  Couldn't get
lilo to run.

I also tried popping in the Debian install disk and typing linux
root=/dev/hda1 and root=/dev/hda3.  Bounced back an error about not being
able to mount the root.

So, I'm pretty much at a loss.  My lack of technical expertise is surely
hindering my efforts at getting this box back up and running.

I've looked at some doc's that showed how to edit Windows XP's boot.ini file
to boot the linux partition but I prefer the lilo setup I had.

With all that said.....HELP!!!!!!  I really need either dummy's approach or a
link to a dummy's approach.

Here's my Partition info.
/dev/hda1 - 10MB  - ext3 - /boot
/dev/hda2 - 256MB - swap
/dev/hda3 - 8GB   - ext3 - /

Thanks in advance,

Tim Emerick
/dev/hda4 - 70GB  - vfat - /c (windows XP fat32 partition)


		
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