UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have successfully installed Slackware 8.0 on a disk and Windows 2000 on the other. The win-disk being the master and linux-disk the slave. I do multi booting via LILO and everything works great.

But recently I've decided to remove the harddrive with linux on and put it in another computer. Here's where the problem comes up.. The computer which had two disks but now one (with win2000) doesn't boot now...

Did LILO do something to that disk that made it depend on LILO, which it no longer can reach.. or what is the problem?

When I put the linux drive back on, everything works as it did before..

by what i know you have to reinstall win2000 so it can install win booter you have to create the 4 boot flopy on win 2000 start the computer whith the boot disks and reinstall win2000.
but maybe this works too
reinstall lilo on hdb (supose win2000 is on hdb) then see if it works(but i supose lilo will start himself)

You must disable the second disk. Your system still thinks that there should be a disk there and is hanging. Are you sure that when you removed the other disk, you should have removed it from the partition table as well?

Try to boot in safe mode or go into DOS only mode and fix the partition table.

Ok first things first. Whenever your playing with Linux and Windows please have a Win 98 startup disk. It's the best thing Bill Gates ever made.

If your computer is still picking up the 2nd HDD disable it from BIOS. Then the computer can't see the HDD at all. That should fix that problem if it's still see'ing the 2nd HDD.

Ok here is why you want the Win 98 startup disk. Boot from the disk. No need for CD-ROM support apon boot. When your at a DOS prompt type 'fdisk /mbr' this will clean your mast boot record and then it should all work fine.

To get 200 working you have to 1st put the boot of the 2000 CD and when the option to install 2000 or repair from console, select repair from console.

When you get to the console type fix boot then answer yes when it ask you if your sure.

Then type fixmbr and answer yes to the when it asked you if your sure.

because when you took the other harddrive out of your computer the lilo boot conf was on that harddrive so now Win2K doesn't have any MBR info so you have to rewrite it.


If it doesn't work let me know. But I'm pretty sure it will.

thanks for the replies
I'll give it a shot this weekend, got a final test in physics i need to concetrate on first

since Windows2000 thinks it has two disks, the boot.ini file was written to.
Boot from a floppy to check this file out (c:\boot.ini).
*NOTE* use the attrib command in DOS to remove its attributes

c:>attrib -h -r -s boot.ini

Make sure that the file is OK. You might have to change some values here, but this is a very, very common problem. check out the documentation on the boot.ini file.

c:\boot.ini
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)AdvancedServer

it is more than likely that you'll have to change the partition number (which is 2). When W2K boots, it tries to boot to the boot partition which you'll have to determine.

W2K can only have 4 primary partitions OR 3 primaries and 1 extended OR 2 primaries and 2 extended and so on. However, in a typical W2K installation (you'll have to know your partition table for this) the #1 partition is your system partition and #2 is your boot partition. When you create these partitions, they are numbered primaries first, then extended. (ie if your configured c:=primary, d:=extended, e:=extended, f:=primary, c: will be 1, f: will be 2, d: will be 3, e: will be 4). If this is confusing, which probably is, do a trial and error with the partition number in boot.ini (values are from 1-4) until you can boot that sucker.

hope this helps and good luck on your final.