Upgrading windows on dual boot system.

[gnostic]

I have mandrake 8.0 and win98 on my dual boot box.

My wife needs to use windowsME and would like me to upgrade.

Can I do so safely without fear that windows will compromise my boot records or whatever esle?

I know that installing windows AFTER installing linux can cause some problems because windows overwrite a few important things (Master Boot Record?).
What about an upgrade (in my case from win98 to winME)???


Thanks

Anguo

[Derango]

Just out of curiosity...why does she *need* ME? Its just 98 with more bugs, a slightly different interface and some movie editing software ;)

What windows does it overwrite the MBR to return it to normal. Technicly ,you're not suposed to install LILO in the MBR....but I'll let somone else take care of that one.

If you did install lilo to the MBR, then you will find you need to do the following:

Anway, make sure you have a boot disk for your linux partition. Then once you install windows, all you need to do is put your boot disk in, start linux and then run lilo to return the MBR to its past, linux-loading condition.

[ 13 September 2001: Message edited by: Derango ]

[Craig McPherson]

You can upgrade Windows without a problem, unless you have a bootloader in the MBR.

Windows does not put its own boot loader in the MBR, but it does check the MBR during installation, and it detects nonstandard code in the MBR, it'll (correctly) assume that the MBR has been corrupted and restore it to its proper state.

If this is the case for you, you'll need to have a boot disk ready to boot your system with. You can either make a LILO boot disk for this, or use your distro's installation CD, or, easiest of all, just dd your kernel onto a floppy disk. Somethign like this:

dd if=/vmlinuz of=/dev/fd0

This will destroy anything on the disk.

That'll allow you to reboot the system and reinstall the boot loader. This time don't put it in the MBR.

If you do not have your bootloader in the MBR, all you have to do is reset the Linux partition as active using fdisk (the upgrade will probably mark the Windows partition as active), and when you reboot you'll see your bootloader like normal.

[gnostic]

Thanks for the replies. :-)

I am not quite sure where lilo or the bootloader is installed. How can I find out?

I have hda1 win98 and hda2 for root (with secondary partitions for /home /usr etc).
During the mandrake install, there is a switch that seem to select where lilo should be installed. Basically the options where to put in hda2 or hda. I tried once hda2 but then the box wouldn't boot.
I therefore had to reinstall (I am very newbie and tend to try solving problems by installing, even when there may be another solution) and this time put lilo in hda. Does that means it is in the MBR?

Anyway, thanks: I got a reply to my primary question and I shall refrain from upgrading until I am sure that I can deal with the problem.

Since I have my important data on a separate partition, I guess I could upgrade to winME and try to follow your advice in order to restore lilo.

FYI, I am having a lot of problems to have linux work properly with chinese, that's why I recently reinstalled win98.
Until I can properly configure linux so that I can do everything in chinese, we (especially my wife) will need windows Word and the rest. I have the cd for Microsoft office ME, therefore i need to upgrade from win98 if I wan't to install that.


thanks a lot.

Blessings,

Anguo

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by gnostic:
<STRONG>During the mandrake install, there is a switch that seem to select where lilo should be installed. Basically the options where to put in hda2 or hda. I tried once hda2 but then the box wouldn't boot.</STRONG>

You probably didn't set the Linux partition as the bootable partition. There wasn't a need to reinstall because of that, but I understand your confusion on the issue because your documentation probably wasn't very clear on the matter.

Does that means it is in the MBR?

Yes. I won't yell at you because you didn't know any better. :)

The upgrade will not affect any of the data on the Linux partitions. They'll be completely untouched. But you won't be able to boot the system from the hard drive until you boot from a boot disk and reinstall the boot loader.

FYI, I am having a lot of problems to have linux work properly with chinese, that's why I recently reinstalled win98.

That's understandable. Translation/localisation is one area where a lot of work is needed. Microsoft has several metric tonnes of translators to translate their software to every language on earth, but with open source software, translation requires volunteer users to do the work, the availability of which can vary depending on the language. Developers are almost always looking for translaters.

I have the cd for Microsoft office ME

I didn't know there was an Office ME. Has anyone else ever heard of it? I've used Office 2000, and Office XP was released a few months back, but I've never heard of Office ME.

Office versions don't really correspond to Windows versions, though. Office 2000 was released a year before Windows 2000, and Office XP was released months before Windows XP. Have you tried installing yet?

[gnostic]

Thanks Craig for your patience and your help.

I keep doing mistakes but I learn a lot in the process...

Originally posted by Craig McPherson:
<STRONG>I didn't know there was an Office ME. Has anyone else ever heard of it?
</STRONG>



Errr.... I am almost as ignorant about microsoft as I am about linux.
It probably is office 2000.
Someone told me that they tried to install it on win98 but it didn't work properly, hence the need to upgrade to winME.

I have not upgraded yet as I have a more urgent problem to solve: that of ADSL connection that i mention in this thread: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=022898
I am forced to use windows to do even basic things like browsing in English. I can't download my email...


As far as chinese linux... I know that there is a solution but my limited knowledge prevents me to implement it yet.
I try to see to the most important first and then learn the rest later, whenever I have time.


The Chinese-HOWTO is way out of date and is of no help at all...
I have heard some people speaking about rewriting it. Once my box is sufficiently setup so that I can work with it, I fully intend to help them, by motivating other experts to contribute and translating myself the document back to English...

I also do my best to answer simple question by people newbie-er than me when I know the answer. I generally do so via the mailing lists I subscribed to.


Thanks

Anguo

[Craig McPherson]

Office 2000 should install fine in Win98. I'm pretty sure I've done it before. When Office 2000 was released, Win98 and WinNT4 were all that was available, so I'm sure it will work. You should certainly try it before doing the upgrade.

As to your language problems, I wish you luck, but at best you'll only have a partial solution. Most Linux software is simply only available in one language, usually English, so even when you get certain components of the system working in Chinese, most applications just don't have a Chinese version. Most Linux programs are written and maintained by one person alone, and so won't be available in many languages. I'm sure you can find a Chinese version of Netscape 4.*, and I'm fairly sure Mozilla (the browser that Netscape 6 is branded from) has many different language versions. Some of the word processor / office suites like Star Office, Applixware, etc. probably have Chinese versions.

Good luck.