First, some background: I recently changed my motherboard from a dead Shuttle AK31A to a KX7-333 on a dual boot win98SE and Mandrake 9.0 box. Everything worked exactly as before- perfectly, except win98 would hang up on connecting to the internet. I solved that by upgrading the win98 nvidia drivers from 1290's to 3032's- all was fine again both win98 and Linux worked perfectly. Two weeks later, I replaced my 32MB original GeForce2 mx video card with a GeForce2 mx400 64MB card. No driver changes, and all worked perfectly. Now to the problem:
After trying and failing to install the Linux nvidia drivers from nvidia many times (following instructions to the letter), I could never get beyond the logo appearing at boot, and then my system freezing up trying to start X. I finally figured out that the driver install was deleting my /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file. Even reinstalling Mandrake always resulted in the same thing, and I never figured it out. I went back to a fresh Drake install with generic drivers, which don't provide 3d acceleration. I've given up on the Linux nvidia drivers for now- neither tar, rpm's, or rebuilding source rpms work on my main system, or my test system either. Now the remaining problem: Since trying the nvidia linux install, win98SE will not boot to anything but safe mode. I'm a windows expert, and have tried everything, short of a reinstall, which I have concluded is the only solution. I've done all windows and KX7drivers removal/reinstalls, many different nvidia drivers known to work before, and all possible windows troubleshooting techniques, bios settings, boot logs, nvidia "detonator destroyer" to remove all traces of old drivers, etc. All drivers are installed correctly, but no luck. Trying to open the nvidia control panel or change the video settings in safe mode gives a black screen, and locked computer. Trying to boot normally with all drivers freezes the machine. Bottom line is the Linux nvidia install mess I experienced has somehow corrupted the windows display to the extent I can't boot to anything but safe mode, and I must reinstall win98SE to to my C partition. Any other ideas are welcome, but it seems my only recourse. My Linux question: When I reinstall windowsSE on a dual boot Linux box, will that overwrite my Linux MBR, and what should I do to prevent, or correct that? Or, will I have to reinstall Mandrake 9.0 after I reinstall windows 98 to get the original lilo mbr reinstalled? Is there a simple procedure for copying the lilo config file, and then replacing the new win98 mbr with lilo? I'm not a linux expert, and am unclear on this. Many thanks, Robert Crawford
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