removing lilo, return to original mbr

[mikeylikesitz]

I searched the forum the best i could but i didnt see the answer i needed. My problem is i installed Lin4Win a while ago just to see how it compared(it didnt!) and took it off. The problem is, i got it uninstalled but lilo is still in the mbr of windows. I was wondering how to restore the mbr back to the original state without screwing up windows. I run System Commander for my boot loader. Thanks

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Welcome to the Revolution!

[KumaSan]

I'm not sure about System Commander, but normally you would boot to dos then at the command line, type "fdisk /mbr" without the quotes, of course. You should be good to go after that.

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jaa, mata-ne...

[pcorbett]

Uninstalling LILO
In order to keep LILO from being invoked when the system boots, its boot sector has to be either removed or disabled. All other files belonging to LILO can be deleted after removing the boot sector, if desired.


LILO 0.14 (and newer) can be uninstalled with the lilo -u command.


If LILO's boot sector has been installed on a primary partition and is booted by the standard MBR or some partition-switching program, it can be disabled by making a different partition active. MS-DOS's FDISK, Linux's fdisk, or LILO's activate can do that.


If LILO's boot sector is the Master Boot Record (MBR) of a disk, it has to be replaced with a different MBR, typically MS-DOS's standard MBR. When using MS-DOS 5.0 or above, the MS-DOS MBR can be restored with FDISK /MBR. This alters only the boot loader code, not the partition table. LILO automatically makes backup copies when it overwrites boot sectors. They are named /etc/lilo/boot.<nnnn>, with <nnnn> corresponding to the device number—that is, 0300 is /dev/hda, 0800 is /dev/sda, and so on. Those backups can be used to restore the old MBR if no easier method is available.


The commands are

dd if=/etc/lilo/boot.0300 of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1
or

dd if=/etc/lilo/boot.0800 of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1
respectively.

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Some other operating systems (such as MS-DOS 6.0) appear to modify the MBR in their install procedures. It is therefore possible that LILO will cease to work after such an installation and Linux has to be booted from floppy disk. The original state can be restored by either rerunning /etc/lilo/lilo (if LILO is installed as the MBR) or by making LILO's partition active (if it's installed on a primary partition).
Typically, the new operating system then has to be added to LILO's configuration (and /etc/lilo/lilo has to be rerun) in order to boot it.

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From Red Hat Linux Unleashed

Hope it is useful

[mikeylikesitz]

I tried fdisk/mbr and it removed System Commander and not lilo, I think i need to research system commander a little. system commmander gives me a choice and then when windows loads i get the lilo choice. no big deal, i play with it and see what i get. thanks for the advice

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Welcome to the Revolution!

[pcorbett]

Check which is the active partition