Install linux floppy

Top Tip: Linux install trashed Windows!

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Question from MIKEHENRY: "I just installed Mandrake Linux 8.2 on my computer - a Compaq Presario 5834 - and now the Windows boot drive is no longer accessible.

The machine has two hard drives in it - both Western Digital drives. One's an older 4 Gig drive (configured as slave) and the other is a new 36 Gig drive (configured as master.) When I started the installation, each drive had an available partition with probably about 10 to 12 Gig total available for Linux.

I ran through the standard install on the Mandrake Linux - opting for Linux to use the available space on the drives. No errors were generated during the install.

Now when I boot up, the boot loader gives me 5 options: 1) linux - it boots without any problem into KDE and the DOS partitions are visible but the partition holding the Windows operating system files is unreadable; 2) failsafe - boots without any problem; 3)Windows - goes to what appears to be a prompt except that it's completely made up of non-printable ASCII code ... the system locks up and I have to reset; 4)Windows2 - automatically returns to the boot loader menu; 5) floppy - looks for a boot floppy.

Is there any chance of recovering the Windows partition or am I stuck with the prospect of reloading Windows again? The investment in software is too big to scrap Windows permanently!"

Answer from SKOOTR: "Boot to a dos floppy (or whatever rescue disk you have) and do a fdisk /mbr

reboot and your windows partition will boot again. Now, you won't be able to access your mandrake partition...but that is why you made a boot disk during the mandrake install, right?!

If you are serious about dual booting i suggest you learn a little about lilo or get yourself a boot manager.

Here is some good info http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue38/veselosky.html"

Answer from MASINICK: "As long as something you've done hasn't destroyed the physical contents of your Windows system, there is no reason that you shouldn't be able to access it once again.

From the description you provided, you have two disks, hda and hdb, and from what I can tell, you've written Linux partitions on both of those disks. If I were to ask you which partitions contain Windows and which partitions contain Linux stuff, could you map them out for me? If you can do that, I can write a GRUB boot loader file for you that will let you access whichever partitions that you need to access.

I sure hope that you have not clobbered all of the data on both disks. That's the one scenario I can't help you recover from - unless you backed up all of your data before you began this excusion. By the way, backing up systems is always a good idea, but it is particularly useful and important when you start experimenting with nothing new. If you don't mind losing something, don't worry about backups. But if you DO care about your information, backing it up is smart; otherwise you can get in situations you potentially can't recover from; hope this is not one of those situations! :-)"

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