Er, I forgot to make the point I was driving towards. Quoting myself: > Note that reinstalling a Microsoft OS always causes it to reassign the > bootable flag to what _it_ wants, silently discarding whatever your own > policy dictated -- and also overwrites (without consulting you) the > MBR sector's program space (initial 446 bytes). For example: > > Suppose your booting strategy is to allow the nameless Microsoft Corp. > MBR program its preferred hegemony over your MBR's program space, and > use lilo in the /dev/hda2 superblock to select which OS to boot. Before > Linux installation, you have: > > /dev/hda1 bootable (aka active) flag NTFS > > After Linux installation, you have: > > /dev/hda1 NTFS > /dev/hda2 bootable (aka active) flag ext3 > /dev/hda3 Linux swap
[snip gory details of bootstrapping] Suppose, some while later, your NT/W2k/XP installation commits seppuku in some fashion, and you decide to reinstall it, overwriting the same /dev/hda1 in order to make the thing operable again. The MS installer, in addition to loading a big load of stuff _into_ /dev/hda1, will without asking your leave reassign the bootable flag: /dev/hda1 bootable (aka active) flag NTFS /dev/hda2 ext3 /dev/hda3 Linux swap (At the same time, it will, without asking your leave, overwrite the 446-byte program space at the beginning of the MBR. But you don't mind that: All it's doing is replacing the nameless Microsoft MBR bootloader with a fresh copy of the same -- at worst, a net NO-OP; at best, you'll wipe out any MBR virus that anyone carelessly installed.) That change having been made, the Int13h BIOS boot routine never loads lilo from /dev/hda2's sector zero, but instead branches stratight to /dev/hda1's sector zero contents, i.e., NT's OS Loader. Ergo, your ability to dual-boot gets silently obliterated (until you realise what happened and fix it). My point is that people whose living-with-Microsoft dual-boot strategy entails conceding the MBR to Redmond need to know about that nasty habit, and be aware of the need to retweak the bootable flag after each Microsoft OS reinstallation. -- Virtual Regards, Rick Moen Sysimperator, dominus regis deusque machinarum. [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
