[Techtalk] Dual-Boot Installation Order?

[Mary Gardiner]

On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 12:43:39PM +1000, jenn at simegen.com wrote:
> I believe that Windows Does Not Play Nice With Others, and will overwrite 
> the boot sector, thus destroying LILO.

It overwrites the Master Boot Record, destroying what LILO has written
there, and meaning that you will boot into Windows automatically. It
doesn't destory, for example, /etc/lilo.conf, which stores the
information about what you want lilo to put in your boot record, meaning
that once you get into Linux you can just rerun lilo and the boot record
will be restored.  Windows only does this on install, it won't do it
again.

So, what this means is that, if you are doing a Windows install second,
and I tend to do this so that I can get my partitions right, you need to
figure out a way to boot into your old Linux install now that Windows
has overwritten the MBR.

There are two ways:
1) A boot floppy or CD-ROM, which will boot to linux. I've never
prepared one, perhaps someone else would like to send instructions.
2) Have a copy of your Linux kernel waiting on a floppy, or on another
computer on the network, and transfer it to you *Windows* hard drive
after the Windows installation. Then download the program loadlin, which
will boot linux from Windows, it will take the location of the kernel on
the command line.

Either way, rerun lilo once in Linux and everything will be restored.

-Mary.

-- 
Mary Gardiner
<mary at puzzling.org>