firefly2442 Posted July 17, 2005 Share Posted July 17, 2005 So I was messing around with this old computer I have and I installed Linux. No big deal but the install wasn't correct so I wanted to go back and redo it. I thought I would have to reset the Master Boot Record (MBR) because there are multiple hard drives. I used a windows 98 boot disk and did a "fdisk \mbr" on it. I guess it worked because now I can't even boot off a CD. When I turn it on the computer just hangs once the BIOS loads. I guess reseting the MBR must have set it so that it thinks windows 98 will load? Any ideas on how to DELETE the MBR completely? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted July 17, 2005 Share Posted July 17, 2005 (edited) So I was messing around with this old computer I have and I installed Linux. No big deal but the install wasn't correct so I wanted to go back and redo it. I thought I would have to reset the Master Boot Record (MBR) because there are multiple hard drives. I used a windows 98 boot disk and did a "fdisk \mbr" on it. I guess it worked because now I can't even boot off a CD. When I turn it on the computer just hangs once the BIOS loads. I guess reseting the MBR must have set it so that it thinks windows 98 will load? Any ideas on how to DELETE the MBR completely? Thanks! ← In Win98, when you ran the fdisk/mbr command, you did wipe it out. Utterly and completely. That command is part of what real professionals use to wipe out any and all traces of a previous install when they are doing a reload. It hangs once the BIOS loads, because it can no longer find an 'index'(MBR) to tell it where to lad from, so if that machine doesn't have a bootable CD drive or it doesn't support it in the BIOS, it won't boot. The best thing to do now is to insert the system floppy and run fdisk, wipe out the partitions, reboot to sys floppy again, create partitions, reboot to sys floppy, and format your partitions. Use the Format C: /s command to format the Win partition and make it bootable. Then copy the .cab files to a folder on a drive and reinstall 98 from the folder. If there is an option booting from the sys floppy to make C bootable with CDROM support, choose this option. Otherwise you have to manually load the CDROM drivers to C. I always make my Linux partitions bootabler from a floppy using lilo. That way, it doesn't mess with the MBR. Pre XP MBR's didn't like having multiple OS's to boot from without a third party boot manager such as Boot Magic that comes with Partition Magic, or the old standby, System Commander. Edited July 17, 2005 by =UE=Phantom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly2442 Posted July 17, 2005 Author Share Posted July 17, 2005 Ahh, ok. So fdisk DOES get ride of the whole thing. Well, it seems my CD-Drive is busted. The computer is a 200Mhz so who knows how old the drive could be... I replaced the CD-Drive and it seems to be working. Really bizarre problem. Here I thought I messed up the MBR. Thanks Phantom. Say, do you know much about how to setup a RAID? I'm gonna give it another go here in a minute but if it doesn't work could I hit you up on IM sometime? Thanks again man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefly2442 Posted July 18, 2005 Author Share Posted July 18, 2005 Well, I got it working. It's strange, the latest version of Ubuntu wasn't able to format the RAID properly but an old version of Mandrake 9 was able to work. Oh well, now I have 27 GB of RAID space for easy backup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Specter Posted July 18, 2005 Share Posted July 18, 2005 Well, I got it working. It's strange, the latest version of Ubuntu wasn't able to format the RAID properly but an old version of Mandrake 9 was able to work. Oh well, now I have 27 GB of RAID space for easy backup. ← Cool. Good to hear. And yeah, you can hit me up on IM anytime, bro. You know where I am. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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