Re: Help! Messed up my MBR part 2
Gertjan Klein wrote:
>
> From what you've written, I gather that you inadvertedly told LILO to
> overwrite the boot sector (_not_ the MBR) of your DOS partition. DOS
> keeps some important bookkeeping information in it's boot sector, among
> which the size of the partition, the number of sectors in a cluster,
> etc. LILO has overwritten this information, so DOS can no longer boot
> from this partition.
>
> I know of no easy solution to this problem. There are no tools that I
> know of, that rebuild a DOS bootsector without also destroying all
> information on the partition.
The first time you install LILO on a device (either the MBR or
a partition's boot sector) it makes a backup copy of the original
boot code. If you haven't done anything else irreversible, you should
be able to uninstall LILO and get your DOS partition boot block back.
Check for the file /boot/boot.0301 (major device 3, minor 1 is hda1).
If it exists, you may be in luck. Read the LILO documentation for
details. This does work, I've used it, although not in such a
desparate situation.
If uninstalling LILO doesn't work for you, you can try using dd to copy
it back onto /dev/hda1.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING, USE dd TO BACK UP THE CURRENT CONTENTS OF
/dev/hda1 SECTOR 0 FIRST JUST IN CASE YOU MAKE THINGS WORSE!
LILO is a powerful tool, and like any powerful tool must be used with
great care, as you can cause a lot of damage very quickly.
--
Bill Roman (roman@songdog.eskimo.com / roman@songdog.uucp) running linux
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