>> Sometimes I have seen it suggested in cases of corrupted mbr's that the >> user write zeros to the MBR with dd. This will certainly stop the >> machine >> booting > > It damn well sure will stop your machine booting. > NULLING OUT THE MBR WILL ALSO NULL OUT YOUR PRIMARY PARTITION TABLE. >
Ahh yes I was only referring to the bit that DOESN'T have the partition table. Zeroing out the partition table is for a different situation - where you don't want the boot code OR the partition table. > Of course it depends on how big you define "MBR". With 512 bytes (the > standard block size) you've had it. The partition table is somewhere in > the > second half of the MBR block. The MBR will be unbootable after nulling the > first 8 bytes, if it even takes that much, if that is your primary > objective. > > Installing grub into the MBR should always give a bootable dual-boot > system > if Linux is installed last. I haven't seen it fail, though with modern > disk > geometries and an older bios booting Linux might fail without a partition > for /boot which is placed completely within the first 1024 cylinders of > the > disk. > > Volker > > -- > Volker Kuhlmann is list0570 with the domain in header > http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me. > >
