[SGVLUG] Disabling LILO

Solomon K. Chang skevin521 at yahoo.com
Tue Sep 26 15:28:47 PDT 2006


In the days of Windows 9x, people would boot off a Windows Setup floppy and run:

fdisk /mbr 

...to "restore" the boot sector.  You could also boot the hard drive in question and
run, as root:

lilo -u /dev/hda (or whatever device the HD is)

This is all assuming that Lilo is installed on your MBR.  If Lilo is expecting Windows
to be on certain partition, and that partition ordinal is the same on both drives (e.g.
/dev/hda1) then I wouldn't worry about accidentally copying the MBR across.

Personally, when I upgrade hard disks, I just dd the entire windows partition to the
other disk first...  It is not bootable at first, but after I install a Linux distro on
whatever remaining space is on that drive, that distro is kind enough to add my Windows
partition to grub/lilo, after which, it boots just beautifully.

Solomon

PS: I used a have a boss named Lisa Sun.  Any relation? :)

--- Lisa Moon <lisadmoon at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am having a problem installing a new 100 gig Maxtor hard drive in my computer.  I
> currently have a partitioned hard drive consisting of part Linux, part Windows XP
> Pro.  I want to copy the contents (except Linux) of my old 30 gig Maxtor hard drive
> to my new 100 gig hard drive, but the installation software that came with the new
> hard drive is complaining about LILO and it is advising me to disable and/or remove
> LILO.  Is diabling LILO advisable (since I'm not sure if I need the boot loader in
> order to boot Windows), and if so, how do I go about doing that?  I am a beginner to
> Linux, so a simple answer with as few technical directions as possible would be
> appreciated.
> 
>  				
> ---------------------------------
> Get your own web address for just $1.99/1st yr. We'll help. Yahoo! Small Business.



More information about the SGVLUG mailing list