Rakotomandimby Mihamina wrote:
Hi, I will have to reinstall my windows XP because I messed it up. I know it will fire my bootloader (lilo on the MBR) That lilo loads three linux installation at the moment (one Debian, one Mandriva and one Fedora). They are respectively an hda1 to hda3. Lilo's on the same partition as the Debian, and it's the debian's loader. The 2 other distros are loaded by that only one boot loader (they have not their own) The partition for the windows OS is ready and empty. It's hda4
seems to me that windows has problems with this. it really only wants to be first partition on the first harddrive. I strongly recommend that you put windows on its own HD, or on the first partition of a second HD. you can remap the drives in lilo so that windows doesn't know. But putting it on its own disk would ensure that its not going to corrupt your other partitions...
I guess I will have to boot with some Debian CD to restore the MBR, but,then,...
I use knoppix and chroot into the old system to run lilo. works great though I have to fight the fear everytime ( i have old mission critical data on my winXP partition and tremble everytime I have to mess with the system at that level).
A
Thank you for any link you would give.