From: garrett@garnet.berkeley.edu (Garrett D'Amore) Subject: Re: How to get rid of LILO? Date: 13 Apr 1993 09:16:21 GMT
In article <1qdrea$5ho@news.uni-paderborn.de> einstein@uni-paderborn.de (Joerg Delker) writes:
>In article <HPDX2B1w165w@vicuna.ocunix.on.ca>, frampton@vicuna.ocunix.on.ca(Steve Frampton) writes:
>|> Hello:
>|>
>|> I wish to move a 213MB IDE drive from my 80386 to my 80286. I completely
>|> got rid of Linux [don't worry, I'm going to install it again :-) ] by
>|> wiping out the partition information and reformatting the drive, complete
>|> with MS-DOS system boot information. I then install DOS along with all
>|> the software I want to put on the 80286.
>|>
>|> Trouble is -- when I boot up the freshly reformatted drive to make sure
>|> everything was kosher, I discovered, "Enter boot partition (1-4)? [1]"
>|> (or words to that effect). It seems LILO is still alive and kicking.
>|> Is there a way to get rid of LILO? I tried UNFORMAT /PARTN but of course
>|> not having a partition backup, this won't work for me. :-)
>
>That's a hard one... ;-) I had the same problem, too.
>
>The problem is, that DOS doesn't wipe the whole bootsector, but only the partition table.
>
>I have done a fdisk-format-run with my old DOS 3.30.
>This one deletes the entire bootsector.
>Some harddisk-utilities do you the same favor.
I don't recommend anyone do this lightly, but I have used a very
*hazardous* method to fix this (restore a dos boot secotor to a system
with a Coherent boot sector, not quite LILO but close enough):
First: MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR BOOT/PARTITION SECTOR!!
Second: Backup a DOS systems boot partition. (Same drive technology --
IDE -- size may be different).
Third: Restore your DOS partition to your original LILO system.
Fourth: DELETE all partitions listed in the new table, and change the
settings so fdisk understands your disk geometry.
THIS METHOD IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR BEGINNERS. IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND
ANYTHING ABOUT ANY OF THE STEPS I'VE MENTIONED, DON'T EVEN TRY IT -- IT
COULD EASILY MAKE YOUR DRIVE "UNUSABLE".
A safer method available if you have AMI BIOS or any utility that allows
you to low-level format your drive is to go ahead and re-low-level
format the drive. (This is NOT the same as dos format or mkfs!) This
you *must* do *before* you fdisk.
If you do low-level format your drive, be sure to record all of your
disk geometry data, because you may very well need it. This is
especially true when your BIOS attempts to "autodetect" your drive.
When you re-low-level format your drive, BIOS frequently fails to
autodetect the drive.
====================================================================
Garrett D'Amore | garrett@haas.berkeley.edu
Software Co-Ordinator | 68 Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley
Haas Computing Services | Ph: 510-643-5923 Fax: 642-4769
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