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Old 03-27-2001, 04:43 AM   #1
lynch
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I want to reinstall win98 on top of itself so I wont lose anything.The only worry I have is this:
I have a dual-boot system with Linux MDK 7.1 on its own ex2fs partition,but in order to have access to both OSes,I had to install the Grub bootloader on the MBR.Will the re-install leave the MBR alone or will that be re-written also?
If the latter, is there a way to save my current MBR and restore it after the win98 re-install?I have a program called Clean Slate that says will backup the MBR but also wipes all data from hdd so I'm not sure if I want to try that.
I have win2k on another comp but this one is used by other people who dont want to use Linux(go figure).Any help would be greatly appreciated.
lynch
 
Old 03-27-2001, 06:18 AM   #2
ugge
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Yes windows will probably overwrite your MBR.

The options to restore should be many.
I haven't used Grub myself, only read about it.
If you like me use lilo you can just rewrite your MBS with '/sbin/lilo' after booting from a boot/rescue disk.
There might be something similar for Grub.

You should be able to write the master boot record to a file using the command 'dd'.
I don't know exactly how to assemble the command line. Read man-pages for dd.
 
Old 03-28-2001, 04:14 AM   #3
lynch
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Smile

Thanks,ugge.I'll look into that.Thanks FTR.
lynch
 
Old 03-29-2001, 07:05 PM   #4
Mike_the_Man
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Wink

You can back up your mbr in linux on a floppy by 'dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/floppy bs=512'
Then you can make a boot disk for linux and just dd it back to your harddrive.
'dd if=/mnt/floppy of=/dev/hda1 bs=512'

I am pretty sure I got the syntax right.
You can also try replacing /mnt/floppy with /dev/fd0.

I did this in RH Linux 6.2

Hope this helps,

Mike
 
  


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