Does winME prevents you from installing LILO in the MBR?

[GNU/br0wni3]

Hello,

Im having a strange problem.

I have a 15 gb hd, with win ME on it, as my primary master. And a 6 gb, partitioned in 3 and 3, as my secondary master.

I tried installing RH7.1 on the second partition of my 6gb disk. I put the disk as the primary master, and disconnected my winME disk (for protection reasons. last installation i did screwed up my winsucks big time). anyway, installation went smooth, i even made my bootdisk. Now, when putting the winME hd as the primary again, and the RH7.1 as the secondary master now, obviously, there was no LILO, as it was installed in the MBR of the secondary master. So i tried the bootdisk. Error, of course. The path must have been set as if linux was installed in the primary master.

So i re-connected the disks again, 6gb primary, 15 gb secondary. Tried to edit lilo.conf to add winME as other. Put it like this:

other=/dev/hdc1 (since winME resides now in the secondary master, first partition)
Label=winME
table=/dev/hdc

saved. sbin'ed the thing. LILO said ok!. But alas, i cannot boot into winME no matter how hard i try. Weird thing is that i CAN mount the winME hd under linux, and browse it and stuff. I just CANT BOOT to it.

Im beginning to think maybe winME is configured so it HAS TO BE set in the primary master to boot. Its weird that even when triying to install powerquest's bootmagic a warning window pops up saying "this program does not function properly under winME, please visit our website for details".

I read a little, and it said that if you are planning to install linux as your second OS, you need to modify the LILO installation so it does not install in the MBR of the disk. Now that i think of it, maybe thats why my windows got vaporized last time, LILO installed on the Primary master's hd (winME) MBR.

Any clues?

In case i cannot touch the MBR, and winsucks HAS To be on the primary master, i think my option would be to reinstall linux, with the 6 gb hd configured as secondary master, and do not install LILO, instead just make a boot disk so the MBR doesnt get touched.

Am i correct? wrong? helppp...

thanks :D

[Timbo]

I can't tell you if WinME needs to be on the Primary Master, this probably isn't the right board to ask that question. However, if it does, you can still get into Linux with your current boot disk. Just pass the kernel a parameter telling it where root is ex. 'root=/dev/hdc1' I found this site for you on the subject of boot prompt params. http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO-3.html You will additionally have to adjust fstab to reflect the changes as well.
Timbo

[Linuxcool]

You could try adding this to your lilo.conf file.


disk=/dev/hdc
bios=0x80
disk=/dev/hda
bios=0x82


There is no guarantee that this will work.

[wreckd]

i think there may be something to the primary master thing....seems like i read somewhere it overwrites the mbr each time it boots.

ok, here's how i did it. my primary master hd is debian my secondary master is winme. if you want winme to be primary slave that's ok, i got that to work too.

i started with a long standing linux install and when i came across an extra hdd i thought i'd add windows for some games. i removed the linux drive for protection and installed the win drive as primary master, installed as winme usual.

next i put the two drives in together...grub is my bootloader (kills lilo!) and so it was still in place on my linux partition. i edited my grub file to add the winme selection. alas, when i tried to boot windows it started, detected the vfat drive and froze. i was pissed.

after some poking through mans and help pages i found a simple fix. fool windows into thinking it is the only drive on the system - and the primary drive at that! my grub file to do this is below. basically you just let grub map the windows drive as your primary master (hd0) and let windows go with it.

grub labels my hard drives as hd0 (linux) and hd1 (win)
#/boot/grub/menu.lst
timeout 7
color yellow/blue black/blue
default 0
fallback 1

# --> GRUB CONFIG <--

title Debian (kernel 2.4.9)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.9-k6 root=/dev/hda2 ro es1371=0x200
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.9-k6

title Debian (kernel 2.4.8)
*snip*-----8<--------8<------

title WindowsME
root (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot

[GNU/br0wni3]

Timbo , thanks for the URL, i'll check it out.

Linuxcool, could you explain me what the bios part does? is it in the "man LILO"? :)

wreckd, thanks, but i think i'll stick to LILO for now.. maybe later when im a little wiser i'll start messing around with other loaders. :)

Thanks to ya'll! :D

:cool: br0wni3 :cool:

[Charles-K]

Hay.

The BIOS part in the lilo.conf file swaps the drivers around so sec-master becomes pri-master, this tricks WinME into thinking that its on the "right" drive.

Hope that helps. :)

[GNU/br0wni3]

Charles - K:

Could this damage my disks / partitions in any way? or is it safe to just give it a try?

Im kinda nervous since i totally screwed up last time and lost all my info on my win partition.. hehe