Getting back to Win2000

[teh supar faggort1]

Okay. I am an idiot. I was playing with lilo and I accidentally set lilo to install itself on my win2k partition. I don't REALLY need any of the stuff on that partition... so I could just format it, and then reinstall.. but I would still like to avoid that if possible... :-) Is there a way that anyone knows to fix my problem? I know this isn't a linux problem, but I figured you guys are smarter than the rest of the windows lot...

Anyways. Thanks.

[Greg Germ]

If you happen to have a Win9x bootdisk hanging around with FDISK on it, get yourself to a DOS prompt with it and use the command "FDISK /MBR".

That should rewrite the unseen mystical boot records and allow Windows to reclaim your computer.

When I had Linux installed on a PC and reloaded W2K from a drive image, I needed to do that in order for the system to use the MS boot and not a LILO boot.

Your milage may vary, however...
-Germ

[trekker]

Just to add on Germ's reply... After that, you can get back your lilo by booting up with your linux boot floppy and reruning lilo as su or root with "/sbin/lilo". :)

[cage47]

Originally posted by trekker:
<STRONG>Just to add on Germ's reply... After that, you can get back your lilo by booting up with your linux boot floppy and reruning lilo as su or root with "/sbin/lilo". :)</STRONG>

You did make a boot disk on your install DIDN'T YOU???? Goooood! You get a cookie. ;)

[toddhd]

Just FYI, if you made that Win2000 partition an NTFS partition, then FDISK/ MBR isn't gonna do diddly for ya... you're screwed.

[stiles]

Originally posted by toddhd:
<STRONG>Just FYI, if you made that Win2000 partition an NTFS partition, then FDISK/ MBR isn't gonna do diddly for ya... you're screwed.</STRONG>


I thought the kernel only had read only NTFS support (if it was even built into the kernel, it usualy isn't unless the user rebuilds the kernel with NTFS)? I think the windows2000 cd has a recovery utility, boot off that and see if there is anything about recovery.

[teh supar faggort1]

It was a Fat32 partition... But when I did the fdisk /MBR thing (I actually tried that before I came here) it just gave me some error saying it couldn't find something like 'ntdir'... Oh well... I just formatted it, and now I am back to where I was... Just 3 hours of my life gone because of a stupid mistake... heck. I wouldn't have spent those 3 hours doing anything better... :-)