--- Rajesh Fowkar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Biju,
Hiya!
> Using linux fdisk I set the bootable flag of hda2 (my extended
> partition). But after doing this when I booted the machine it refused
> to boot giving the error that invalid partition table. I had to boot
> using floppy and run fdisk from floppy and set active partition as
> c:, then automatically the bootable flag set on extended partition
> vanished, since dos/windows fdisk does not allow to set bootable flag
> to more than one partition.
Per my understanding (gurus correct me if I'm wrong) the standard
bootloader in the MBR is not very bright and uses the bootable flag to
decide which bootsector to load. In a simple OS like MS-Duh, the
"kernel" - IO.SYS sits in the bootsector and is loaded.
What we want is to have something a little more intelligent to load:
lilo. It understands multiple OSes etc so is a better bootloader. When
it is in the MBR, it is loaded by the BIOS bootstrap code. If it is in
a partition bootsector it has to be loaded by the simple boot loader in
the MBR.
Naturally, if more than one partition is flagged as bootable the MBR
loader gets confused and dies. I think if you make *only* your
/dev/hda2 as bootable, your problems will be solved.
Biju
=====
------------------------------------------------------------
Biju "Botsie" Chacko
E-Mail: botsie at mail dot com (personal)
editor at spluspl dot com (work)
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