Re: Unable to boot

[R G Cottrell <rossc@froggy.com.au>]

Manudath Gurudatha wrote:

> Can anyone tell me how to overwrite the MBR? My Debian machine is
> screwed up and it gives an error similar to "L 80 80 80..." while
> booting....
try man install-mbr

or maybe man -k mbr

Of course, this only works from within linux, which you might
not have on floppy disk.

I seem to recall that MS-DOS will write a (DOS) master boot record
with fdisk /mbr, so if you have any old DOS diskettes around, you
might try that.

Alternatively, get hold of a knoppix CD.  They have a good reputation
for being good at recovering systems.  They will almost certainly
have install-mbr available as one of the tools.


Regards, Rossc.