Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 8:27 am

I finally got around to doing the Fedora linus installation in order to get some IMAP and POP servers to play with.

I must say, with all due respect to IceChild, it was a real mess.

Part of the problem was that I am paranoid about letting *any* boot manager install itself to the MBR. I've been burned by this in the past. So instead I told it to make a boot floppy.

I was doing the install on my old development system which already had a 3GB partition set aside for linux experimentation.

During the install, it failed to initialize X for some reason, so I had to use the text-based installer. That wasn't too bad.

After doing the install and creating the boot floppy, I tried to boot. The floppy didn't work. Somehow the boot floppy got the partition of /boot wrong. I ended up spending 20 minutes learning how to make a GRUB boot disk, and then played around with various cryptic commands to boot linux. Finally got it to work. Gave in and let it install GRUB to the MBR. Then everything worked better.

Once I got into the command line mode, I was able to run the Red Hat X-window configure program. Turns out it was trying to initialize X on the wrong graphics card (the system has 2 cards in it). When it finally tried the correct card, then it worked.

After that I then tried installing Fedora to my Windows 98 laptop which also has a 3MB partition reserved for linux. This is where my old Caldera installation was located.

This time I installed GRUB to the MBR and it worked fine. X-Windows worked fine, which was a nice surprise given the obscure NeoMagic video card used in the Sony Viao. What didn't work was the sound card (low priority). Also, the DLink Wireless network card didn't work.

Took over an hour to figure out the problem with the network card. RedHat was doing something wierd and had not installed the card properly. Using their graphical tool I was able to remove the card and reinstall it as a "Wireless" device instead of an "Ethernet" device. Took a while to figure out how to set the WEP key properly, but I *finally* got the network working.

I'm now downloading the updated from the RedHat site. So far, so good. I still need to get Samba configured so I can print to my printer on our NT server.

Fedora comes with Evolution, so I'll be able to take a look to see what they are doing with email and groupware. Should be interesting.

The bottom line is that it took a *lot* longer to get Fedora working that I would have liked, and I ended up doing a lot of command line stuff to get things working. A lot of my unix sysadmin knowledge came back to me, but I'd hate to see someone with little/no *nix experience deal with this.

Still not ready for "novice" computer users I'm afraid.

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

Bill Gates is trying to design Windows to be as easy to use as a fridge (unfortunately, he left little holes for cochroaches to get in) and Linux was designed by geeks, for geeks... guess which one is easier to install and setup with little/no hassle? =)

I like Linux and have even had BeOS installed on a machine (which I know isn't linux, but I really liked it), however most alternate OS solutions aren't nearly as user-friendly as their computer savvy patrons try to portray.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 9:12 am

Yep. I'm just surprised at how little has improved in the 4 years since I played with Caldera.

Dual-booting and partioning is still a pain (you're almost screwed if you don't own Partition Magic)

Hardware configuration is *real* geeky (linux really needs the kind of "plug/play" that Windows has these days. linux reminds me more of messing with Windows 3.x before plug/play)

Still too much stuff installed that I don't think I'll ever use.

Oh well...I'm not really complaining. I didn't install it to replace Windows in any sense. It's just interesting to keep an eye on where linux is going, and it doesn't seem that different that what I remember several years ago.

Example: Compare Windows XP with Windows 98...roughly 5 years apart. A *huge* difference in stability, features, look/feel, etc. Yeah, XP has lots of issue with supporting old hardware, but it's a big step forward.

Compare Caldera linux (1998) with Fedora linux (2004). Also roughly 5 years apart. And I still see a lot of the familiar Gnome versions of various unix tools that I saw before. The install of Caldera was actually smoother than Fedora in terms of the partitioning and dual-booting. Can't compare the wireless because I didn't have wireless back in 1998. Default desktop setup and "theme" looks a bit more "windows-like" than in the past, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Just doesn't feel that different to me given 5 years of development.

Makes me wonder how much real development is going on.

Then again, I probably really shouldn't be commenting on this since I've only been playing with Fedora for a couple of hours and most of the time was spent doing updates and messing with config files. I haven't even looked at OpenOffice or Evolution yet, and those are the new things on the desktop that I haven't played with before. So, it's very possible there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that I've noticed yet.

I *do* like the ability to download system updates ala "Windows Update" using the Red Hat updater. Of course, it takes forever because it's updating all of the packages that I'm probably not using because I didn't take the time to look through the whole list to decide what I really needed.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

Heh, we're probably both going to get bashed, but I've always said Linux feels like 3.11 with regards to user-friendlyness.

Just because something is made by geeks doesn't mean it should take geeks to run it.

I (and Zugg) being programmers are by definition, geeks, and both of us write software (in our respective markets) that is both user-friendly, and powerful.

Why does such a simple concept elude the open source community?

I guess this is a bit of an OT rant, but I'm just really disappointed by linux too. It has (since MSDOS days) had so much potential and I would love to run it as my operating system, but it's just nowhere near Windowses (or even dare I say it Macses) usability for a day-to-day desktop.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 6:41 pm

Part of the problem, I think, is the lack of modern graphical development tools such as Delphi and Visual Basic. Borland made a stab at it with Kylix, but it doesn't seem to have gone over too well. The battle between KDE and Gnome (and others) might also be hurting. As I am fully aware, the user interface of a modern application often takes a lot more time and effort than the underlying code. Writing something portable enough for both sets of widgets means that you often get either an application focused on one or another, or something that uses the least common denominator and looks more like raw X with a pretty window manager theme. I know that porting Kylix code that uses the QT libraries for KDE over to Gnome is a pain. It's honestly almost like having different operating systems to deal with.

Oh well. In a way we are really lucky though. Because we have "Intel" (or Athlon) hardware, we get a choice and can run either Windows or linux or both. If you buy a Mac, you are stuck with OSX as nice as it is. It *is* pretty cool that I can install an entire operating system full of reasonable tools for free on the same hardware that I'm running Windows on. But I still remain convinced that Windows development is where I need to stay to support a business.

Linux *is* getting better, but just at a slower pace than I would have expected given the hype about how great open source development is.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 7:24 pm

Actually, if you were on a mac, you too could use Linux ( http://penguinppc.org/ ), so whatever hardware you choose to use, it's most likely going to be supported. Actually, that's one thing I find very refreshing about Linux, is it's ability to still support older hardware, for instance every ISA device out there that (as Zugg found previously) won't work in XP.

As for the installer, yeah, that is something that's actually being addressed by the Anaconda & X people. Problem is the lack of drivers for some very obscure video cards. Some don't report properly, and until they're supported, it's a pain to install on those systems. So why not just go out there and make drivers for them? Well, we've got brand new video cards that need supporting too, plus the updates/etc. Lots of work, not a lot of people who are interested in writing video drivers. Wink

I've never had a problem with dual-booting, so I'm not entirely sure where the problem was, but it's never given me any grief at all so long as windows went on the system first.

Wireless is still a fairly new thing to heck, most OS's, so I'm not suprised that there was some issue there, nor am I suprised at the problems with dual-video cards (again, something that's a very small market indeed, and I dunno who's working on stepping up to that plate yet). Though, I must say, with my Linksys Wireless card, I had less problems installing it in Linux than on Windows. Linux infact detected it, and installed it with me only acknowledging that it existed. Windows? I had to go thru all manner of problems with horrible drivers/etc.

Developer tool wise, there are some really nice programs out there, but then again, it depends on what you're refering to as "modern". For instance, Anjuta ( http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/ ) is a wonderful piece of software for any C/C++ developer, much like Visual Studio 6. And while true, there aren't many "vb-like drag-and-drop" interface editors, they do exist ( http://glade.gnome.org/ ).

What's really been an improvement is the Kernal, that's where a LOT of work has been done since last time you used it, supporting things like DVD's natively, getting support in there for various newer and better file systems, making sure that things interoperate with one another in a more fluid manner. That type of stuff has seen massive amounts of increases in even the last 2 years.

As for it's useability, I use it every single day at home, and I've never had an issue doing anything on it save for playing some of the brand new games that Transgaming ( http://www.transgaming.com/ ) doesn't support. Evolution is an absolutely great program, and it should be a model for what Outlook and OE could be, given enough effort. GAIM ( http://gaim.sourceforge.net ) is probably the ultimate IM client I've ever experienced, as it has everything one needs, without all the junk that's typically attached as extra baggage. Gimp ( http://www.gimp.org/ ) for all your graphic creation needs. And let us not forget the powerful cross-platform suites like OpenOffice and the Mozilla group. There is a ton of software out there for any level of user, it's just a matter of finding the right stuff (as with anything).

Oh yeah, I should mention, I'm a huge fan of Gnome, mainly due to the ability to run it's platform on any other OS, and then run their applications. You can fire up the GTK on most modern OS's and play around with it's libraries, or heck, write your application to use them. And just because you have the GTK installed, doesn't mean you have Gnome installed. With KDE? You have to install KDE, which means that you need an OS in which KDE can run (which to the best of my knowledge, there is only 1 Razz

). Sure, you can install the QT libraries, but it seems that every single QT app I've attempted to run using those has given me grief for not having some other KDE based component installed. (eh, that "war" is hopefully going to be coming to an end soon, with the two sides talking more about a "unified desktop", though then again, it's been said before)

I dunno, you can't really rate it until you've sat down and given it a fair chance. Far to many people install it, and expect it to do things the "windows way", and when it doesn't, they go running. It's not windows, nor should it be windows, heck, that's a lot of the reason it's so popular among certain circles and across the globe.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 7:42 pm

Yep, you are definitely right about Gnome vs KDE. That's part of my disappointment with Kylix. Since Borland got a deal from the QT people, they basically caved in. Getting then a license that allowed them to redistribute QT and allow developers to use it without their own QT license was just something they couldn't turn down. So, you end up with Delphi being great at KDE apps, but lousy at Gnome, and I agree that Gnome is really the way to go these days. That's at least one reason why I'm sure there hasn't been overwhelming support for Kylix.

Oh, and the Windows/Linux issue vs Mac/Linux...yeah, I knew you could run linux on a Mac box these days. But somehow running 2 niche OSes just doesn't seem as good as the Windows/Linux combo. Especially since Mac OSX is really another *nix. However, as I've been browsing "theme" sites, it is *very* amusing that the most popular themes by far are always the OSX "Aqua" themes...for either Windows or Linux. Mac *does* have wonderful graphical designers.

The wireless issue was with setting the WEP key. Apparently Red Hat tries to start the Network (eth0) *before* starting PCMCIA. So, it isn't able to configure the wireless card, and since the WEP key is part of the network config files and not the pcmcia config files, when the pcmcia driver starts, the card gets started without any WEP key. My solution was to move the pcmcia startup BEFORE the network startup in the boot order and that fixed it. There is a lot of complaining about this topic, so apparently it has been an issue with RedHat for quite a while...just don't know why they haven't fixed it. Messing with boot order isn't something I should be doing.

But yes, you are completely right...I can't really give a fair opinion till I've lived with it for a while. I'm looking forward to taking a look at the Evolution program. I was mainly reporting on my initial bad luck with installation, which is still going to turn a lot of people off. But if some hardware manufacturer would start putting a real nice linux system together and promoting it, that would help since the end-user wouldn't have to deal with the install.

I guess Microsoft would probably throw a fit if a hardware vendor started selling a "dual-boot" Windows XP and Linux system together. But they'd probably get a lot of sales from people who want to test the linux waters but are afraid of messing up their Windows system.

Anyway, the linux server is up and running, and my linux laptop is up and running and all are up to date. So now it's back to programming.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 8:37 pm

Sorry to rant a bit, but what's the deal with the lack of NTFS support in Fedora? I mean we've had NTFS for what, 4 years or so now? Is this just a Microsoft issue with the lack of any technical information? Or is it the lack of desire for Windows interoperability in linux? I had expected ntfs to be standard these days. Looks like the best I can get is read-only support, and it's not even built into the Fedora kernel, so now I have to do kernel patching, which I'm not very confortable with.

Sorry, but this is yet another reason people are not going to switch to linux. With Windows 2000 and Windows XP, *most* file systems that you want to read your previous files from are going to be NTFS systems, and most people are going to want reliable read AND write support during the migration period between Windows and linux.

Sigh. So much for making my old development system into a linux file server when it can't even read any of the files that I had previously stored there under Windows.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 10:12 pm

It's actually a lack of technical information to create a good, solid, NTFS reader/writer. There are a couple you can download and install, but it's not to the caliber that most distros would want to put it as a default install. Infact, it's a major project over at sourceforge that you can actually install with a single RPM Wink

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

Once it's more stable, I'm sure it'll be a very hot thing to have in distro releases.

Course, the same thing could be said for Windows and it's complete lack of EXT2, EXT3, ReiserFS, and many many more file system formats that have been around for years yet Microsoft has decided to completely and utterly ignore. So it's not just on one side of the playing field that things need to be updated.

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

quote:
Originally posted by IceChild

It's actually a lack of technical information to create a good, solid, NTFS reader/writer. There are a couple you can download and install, but it's not to the caliber that most distros would want to put it as a default install. Infact, it's a major project over at sourceforge that you can actually install with a single RPM

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

Once it's more stable, I'm sure it'll be a very hot thing to have in distro releases.

Course, the same thing could be said for Windows and it's complete lack of EXT2, EXT3, ReiserFS, and many many more file system formats that have been around for years yet Microsoft has decided to completely and utterly ignore. So it's not just on one side of the playing field that things need to be updated.

Something that people seem to forget are patents. Like the FAT file system requires a license to be used legally I think.

When it comes to ext3fs there might be other license issues such as the GPL which could render the possibility to add Windows support for it impossible.

If you are using a Linux system you want to use ext3fs or some other file system that is designed for it Smile

. A small NTFS implementation writing bug might not be very funny.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 11:07 pm

Actually, (and I really hate it when people say stuff like this) just because it's GPL has NOTHING to do with support for it. There are infact EXT2 drivers out for Windows that you can download via a third party.

What Zugg was refering to was the ability to read from those file systems, not install Linux on said file system, and that has a very good point. You should be able to read and write from and to ANY filesystem you choose with ANY given OS, and until such abilities are enabled on ALL OS's, no OS will be out of the blame.

And no, as far as I understand, the FAT system is available in an unlicensed form, as is the NTFS file system. Now wheather there is proper documentation on how to program something to access said filesystem, that's another story indeed. But as far as licensing is concerned, I don't believe there is anything holding anyone back.

Also, it doesn't matter what filesystem you're running, any bug could be a "big bug" or a "very serious" matter. So that point is really mute.

Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 11:18 pm

Yep, I found that sourceforge reference and installed it.

Microsoft, of course, has nothing to gain by adding support for other file systems like ext3

Linux, on the other hand, has a lot to gain by supporting as many file systems as it can.

I can imagine that Microsoft isn't happy to let other OSes access their file system because they might recognize how tenuous their hold on the OS monopoly might really be. And yes, a bad file system implementation that isn't stable or corrupts data would be very bad indeed.

But I have no choice on this one. The computer I'm putting linux on is my old developement system and it has 5 partitions of NTFS files left over from my old Windows 2000 system (which I can still boot to if I need it). The main purpose of this system was to serve these 5 disks of old files in case I need them. There is no way I'm changing file system formats.

So far the sourceforge system seems to work, although I haven't dared run it in "read/write" mode. I really just need "read" mode so that I can get to my old development files as needed.

Getting the ntfs support working was pretty straight forward once I read the instructions on how to figure out what kernel I was running. The guy running that site deserves a LOT of credit for making RPMs for various systems so us newbies don't have to build stuff from source.

Of course, once ntfs was running, it was time to run Samba to serve my old disks out to the rest of our network. That was a PAIN.

I spent two hours trying to get Samba working. I could do everything just fine from the linux box, but whenever I'd try to connect to a file share from my Windows box, it would just keep prompting for the password over and over again.

I read about a lot of people with similar problems with no solutions. I can understand that Samba can get complicated, but the level of help out on the net wasn't very impressive. To many "go read the manual" kind of posts. The manual is *very* complicated for new users.

Finally, I found a good article that describes the problem with Windows and it's password encryption stuff. Apparently Windows XP encrypts the password with it's own proprietary algorithm, and they aren't going to share it. So, when Linux receives the encrypted password, it has no idea what to do with it. So it keeps prompting.

I finally had to turn off passwords entirely on the linux Samba box and just turn on IP-address filtering so that only the specific computers on my network can get to the files. I hate using public guest access for this, but I don't see a choice since WinXP no longer supports clear-text passwords, and nobody but Microsoft can handle the password encryption algorithm. Yet more Microsoft pain.

But it finally works. I can now access the files on my old development system again, even though it's running linux now. Since it was just sitting in a corner acting as a Windows 2000 file server before, I can now leave it running as a permanent linux server and start playing with other linux stuff on it.

Heh, the funniest thing today was setting up the linux server to print to our HP2500 printer that is attached to our Windows NT file/mail server. I've always had a HECK of a time getting this printer to work on WinXP systems. I always have to fake out Windows into thinking it's going to print to a local LPT port and then change the port out from under it to point to the NT server.

Well, on linux it worked the first time like a charm! So at least they seemed to have gotten the printer support working well (at least for me).

Posted: Sat May 01, 2004 12:33 am

quote:
Microsoft, of course, has nothing to gain by adding support for other file systems like ext3

Actually, they'd prolly have a lot to gain in the PR department if they allowed reading from other operating systems. There's nothing users (especially the more advanced they are) like less than being locked into a proprietary format that is a royal PITA to get away from. hehehe, funny thing is, we had this discussion about mail client formats here not that long ago Wink

, same thing really applies to the File System Formats.

Novice Joined: 15 Nov 2001 Posts: 39

In defence of linux:

The last 3 versions of SuSE linux I installed (7.3, 8.1, 9.0) all went in without a hitch. All hardware installed and autoconfigured. ALL of it. No problems. Beutiful GUI guided me through installation, and generally made good choices by default (I don't like that it doesn't install the kernel source by defult, but that's what manual settings are for.)Actually, the only thing that took the slightest bit if tweeking was getting my ATI Radeon to support 3d, which was simply a matter of downloading the driver, and following the directions in the readme.

Linux, in my personal experiance, is FAR easier to install than windows. It never restarts during installation, and come on, when was the last time that you only needed to provide windows with ONE driver on installation?

Maybe I am in the minority. Anyone else out there always have a wonderful, thought-free pain-free linux install?

Posted: Sat May 01, 2004 9:20 pm

I agree that it seems to depend upon what "brand" of linux you install. In some ways, there really isn't any such thing as "linux" to the end-user. It always depends upon whether you are using RedHat/Fedora, SuSE, Caldera, etc. As I've mentioned, I had a very painless install of Caldera 5 years ago. I also remember playing with SuSE back then (still have the books...but it couldn't detect my Sony Laptop video driver back then).

I picked Fedora because of some recommendations here on the forums for it and because I happened to see a book at Borders with the entire 6-CD distribution on a single DVD and thought it would save me time and hassle. Apparently the problem with the wireless card being initialized *after* the network drivers is unique to RedHat/Fedora. So, with SuSE I probably would not have had the problem.

The problem with booting, I have already admitted, was my own paranoia about not wanting to put the boot loader into the master boot record.

So anyway, the end-user experience is dependant upon the brand of linux being used, which, unfortunately, just adds to the end-user confusion. That's why I think some hardware company really needs to push forward with preinstalled Linux/Windows systems to remove this confusion and just let the end-user play with a stable installation.

The more people who suffer with the installers, the worse reputation as a "hackers" system linux will get. The more people who can play with a stable pre-installed version, the more people might actually like linux. I must admit that after actually *using* the system for over a day now, I'm coming to like it more and more.

What I was mainly ranting about is that the Fedora installation was *worse* than the Caldera installation I did 5 years ago on the same exact laptop (yes, the laptop is 5 years old). I had expected bigger changes and improvements in the so-called "leading" linux distribution during that time period. Maybe I should have tried SuSE instead?

And yes, you are definitely right about Windows. Anyone here has read my rants about the latest Windows XP install that I did. I *always* have trouble with Windows installs, especially with printers. But my point is that many people never have to do their own Windows install...Windows comes preinstalled on their computer, or loaded on their work system. That's the state linux needs to get to in order to get more adopters I believe.

Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 7:40 am

Damn.

IceChild, I don't know if you can give me any help on this or not, but I can no longer boot the Windows 2000 partition on my dual-boot Windows/Linux system.

This *used* to work. At least I tested it once. I've had the linux system running ever since and the only change is that I ran the auto-updater in Fedora to update the linux kernel. So now my GRUB screen has 2 selections for linux (the old kernel, and the new kernel) along with the previous "Windows" selection.

My disk config is:

hda1 windows C: drive (FAT, location of BOOT.INI file for Windows)
hda3 windows H: drive (NTFS, location of /Windows directory)
hda5 windows D: drive (FAT)
hda6 windows I: drive (NTFS)
hda7 /boot for linux

hdb2 windows FAT drive
hdb3 windows FAT drive
hdb5 windows P: drive (NTFS)
hdb6 / for linux
hdb7 linux swap

(yeah, it's wierd...this disk has been through a lot).

So, my previously working GRUB record was:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

When I try this now, either from the GRUB boot menu in the MBR or from a GRUB boot disk, I don't get any error message, just a black screen.

When I load linux and mount the disks, all of the files still seem intact, and the BOOT.INI file is still present and readable.

All I can think of is that installing the NTFS support into the linux kernel somehow wrote something to the Windows drive to make it no longer work.

Any ideas on how to get Windows back? I wanted to test some stuff on Windows 2000 and this was my only system running that version of Windows. I'd hate to have to reinstall (and then fix all of the linux stuff that Microsoft will break)

(Oh, and YES, I'm still sick. I don't know what I'm doing messing with computers at this hour of the night while I'm sick. It's probably a really bad idea. But I'm coughing so much that I can't sleep. I didn't think it would be so hard to reboot the computer and get Windows back, but this old computer does seem to have a curse on it)

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

You can lose the linux boot loader and get back to windows with FDISK /MBR... but at that point you'll probably have to reinstall grub to be the boot loader to get back into linux.

Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 7:41 pm

Is that a linux command? Or do I need to somehow find a DOS boot disk?

Wizard Joined: 14 Oct 2000 Posts: 1368

quote:
Originally posted by Zugg

Is that a linux command? Or do I need to somehow find a DOS boot disk?

*faints* You weren't active in the good DOS days? Very Happy

. The "fdisk /mbr" command rewrites the master boot record if I remember it correctly.

http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q69/0/13.ASP&NoWebContent=1

The above page seems to warn you from using the command if you have more than four partitions. There seems to be a list of warnings. You should really be careful with disk editing commands as it can go wrong, very, very wrong.

Magician Joined: 13 Oct 2000 Posts: 463

He should not run fdisk /mbr. That puts a DOS bootloader on... wiping out Grub's bootloader. As for exactly how he should fix it, I'm not sure. I just know that wiping out grub is not a step in the right direction.

Posted: Wed May 19, 2004 9:47 pm

For your grub.conf configuration, try this for a fix:

title Windows 2000
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

Posted: Thu May 20, 2004 12:22 am

IceChild, I think that config is for when you have Windows on disk 2 and linux on disk 1.

Yes, I remember FDISK from the old DOS days, but there is also an "fdisk" command in linux used for messing with partitions, and that's why I asked the question.

Replacing the MBR doesn't seem to be the solution I'd try first. After all, GRUB is coming up just fine and has all sorts of options. It seems to be more of a problem with the NTLDR boot loader program on HDA1

For example, if I use "rootnoverify (hd0,3)" to specify a "wrong" partition, then it gives me the error "Cannot find NTLDR". I do not get that error when using the correct (hd0,0) location, so that seems to mean the NTLDR was found, but somehow fails to continue booting.

Since I have a GRUB boot disk, I guess I can do whatever I want to the MBR, but, of course, since I can't get Windows to boot and don't have a DOS boot disk laying around, I have no way to run FDISK. I had to give up on DOS boot disks once I started using NTFS file systems since DOS disks didn't have any way to read them. The C: boot drive is still FAT instead of NTFS and I might have a DOS disk somewhere in an old drawer. But I'm thinking that all it will do is try to boot the messed up NTLDR and have the same problem I'm already having.

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

You use your Win2k/WinXP CD to boot to the recovery console and execute that fdisk /mbr command. There's other commands in the recovery console to do with the boot.ini file and stuff too, but I can't remember what they all do now. But maybe your boot.ini has gone whack on the Win2k partition.

Maybe you could even use the windows boot loader to run linux from in the same way you can have it boot to 98 or XP on the same system? Dunno. I try not to have dual boot machines because I've had no end of trouble with them in the past :)

Magician Joined: 09 Oct 2003 Posts: 459 Location: USA

You'll need grub to point to the FAT/NTFS drive C:

Win2k/XP will have most likely tossed all of its boot information to this partition, regardless of where the WINNT directory is. The reason for this is the old DOS days. Blame the guy that Microsoft bought QDOS off of.