by I just installed Linux 0.99p11 today, and I wanted to install LILO.
My DOS partition was /dev/hda1 and my Linux partition /dev/hda2. I ran
QuickInst, told it to install LILO on /dev/hda1 and rebooted.
Linux booted up fine from the hard drive. Dos did not. Ooops. No problem,
I have a dos boot disk with fdisk on it (I use dos 5.0, by the way).
I do a dir c: . Invalid media type.
I do fdisk /mbr, then dir c: . Invalid media type again.
I load up Norton Disk Doctor. It tells me drive c: has a size of 0k and it is
unable to analyze it.
Fdisk tells me the primary partition is of type unknown.
Now for the weird part. I type format c: . I answer n to the are-you-sure-
you-want-to-do-this message. I do a dir c: again. BAM! The directory
pops up. Odd, everything seems to be fixed. Even fdisk shows the partition
is now FAT-16.
I reboot. Still can't boot up DOS from the hard drive. I use my dos boot
disk, do a dir c: . Invalid media type again. I do the format c:, n,
routine again, dir c:, and the directory pops up. I fire up Norton
Disk Doctor, it tells me the boot record is screwed up, I tell it to
correct it.
I reboot again. It tells me the hard drive is a non system disk. I transfer
the system from my boot diskette, reboot again, and everything is back
to normal.
Questions:
(1) How did I*up with LILO?
(2) Why didn't fdisk /mbr restore the boot record?
(3) Why did an aborted format command make the drive readable?
(4) Why did I need to transfer the system back when the system
files looked intact?
--
Qui pourrait m'empecher / Julien David Huyghe, Pomona College '93
--Mylene Farmer