HELP please! Windows dont boot no more!

[shadowfla]

Hi everyone!
I have a problem! I installed successfully a dual boot of red hat 9 and windows 98 a while back, using phantasms guide, and showed off to my friend. Now i just helped my friend dual boot red hat 9 with windows xp. He can boot linux fine with a boot disk, but when he removes the boot disk to try and load windows, he just gets a letter "L" on the screen, and it freezes!!
HEELPPP!!!

thanks a lot people!

 

[ViperSnake]

Well today I just installed RHL 9 in a dual boot. I installed to a second drive and made it so that it booted from a floppy. Caused no harm to my Windows XP install on the first drive.

 

[NoisySilence]

During the RH install, did you ask it to install Lilo in the Master Boot Record ( MBR ) ?

Maybe it didn't do it correctly. Try to boot from a Win98 floppy ( www.bootdisk.com ) or CD, once you get to the command line, try fdisk /MBR.

You'll have to reinstall Lilo though.

 

[Phantasm66]

You accidently wrote a LILO into the MBR, not the bootsector of the / partition.

You need to remove this.

Boot your redhat system.
(in this example, we will assume that hda5 is your Linux partition, substitute accordingly.)

Issue this command (as root)

/sbin/lilo -u



Now, either:


1)
ADD LINUX TO WINDOWS 2000 or XP MENU:
-------------------------------------------------------

now, edit /etc/lilo.conf , and change boot=/dev/hda to boot=/dev/hda5 (where hda5 is your / paritition).

Now this command:

/sbin/lilo

Reboot and see if the NT menu is back.

If so, maybe then you want to add Linux to the NT boot menu.

Boot back into Linux.

Issue this command

dd if=/dev/hda5 of=./bootsect.lin bs=512 count=1

copy the file created (bootsect.lin) into c:\

open c:\boot.ini in notepad

add this line to the end:

c:\bootsect.lin="Red Hat 9"

ensure that bootsect.lin is copied to c:\

Reboot, both operating systems should be available from the boot menu.

....Hopefully....



2)
WHAT TO DO WITH WINDOWS 98 :
--------------------------------------------

fdisk /mbr
sys a: c:

(when you have booted from a Windows 98 boot floppy.)