On Fri, 19 Jan 2007 15:03:49 +1300 Volker Kuhlmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 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. > > 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. Absolutely. This was the cause of the disk I was trying to restore last week. 512 null bytes. Cause was static and those really apalling Maxtor single platter drives that came out a few years ago. The only problems I have ever seen convertng a windows machine to dual boot have *ALL* been caused by the partition resizing software. Steve
