From: manuel@engc.bu.edu (manuel Toledo-Quinones) Subject: Linux broke my computer! Date: 11 Sep 1993 06:03:39 GMT
Not exactly. I guess that I was the magnificent source of stupidity
that is neede to mess things so badly!
I have a problem and I need help. I install linux in my pc a couple
of days ago. I was using a 340Meg drive to run linux, and keeping my
80 meg drive, compressed with superstor, running drdos. They were both
working fine, with no problems out of the ordinary.
Now, tonight I decided that I needed to decompress my 80 meg hard drive
to be able to read the data from linux. Superstor, however, do
not let you just decompress the drive because is the primary dos disk.
So I tought: o.k., I will re-partition my new 340 meg drive, this time
with drdos, to create a dos partition, back up my dos drive into my
340meg h.d., install drdos again in the 80meg drive, and restore the
data back from the 340meg. I was going to have to run linux 'fdisk. and
install it again, but I tought it was better to do it earlier than late.
The plan was simple, but naive! I did not remove the linux partition
thinking that just running dos 'fdisk' on the drive was going to solve
the problem. Also I did not remove 'LILO', which was being run
automatically on boot-up. Now, what happens is that LILO comes up
when I try rebooting, and the computer, of course, goes crazy if I
don't stop it from booting the nonexisting linux. I can, however,
still run dos from drive c.
I though that just using the bootup floppy created by linux will
hopefully provide me with a way of removing LILO. But now the floppy drives
are crazy, and I can not read floppies nor bootup from them! They are not
totally dead: drive A does a strange noise if I put a f.d. w/o write
protection. It does not do anything if the disk is write protected. Drive
B does not seem to be doing anything.
I will be inmensily greatful if someone can give me a hand with this
one. Should I just format the 340meg hard drive to see it that removes
anything that might be left from linux there? Or is LILO somewhere in
my C drive?
Again, all help will be greatly appreciated.
manuel