[vox-tech] Problems with dual boot system (Win 98/RH 7.2)

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Joey Karalius <jwkaralius@ucdavis.edu> 
> OK, here's what I did.
> 
> My Windows 98SE crashed to the point where I couldn't do an emergency
> backup of important files or even run win98 setup to restore the
> corrupted system files.  So I repartitioned and formatted my slave drive
> which had RedHat 7.2 on it (I was running a dual boot) to an extended
> DOS partition so I could backup Windows files to it (just some bookmark
> files, Word documents, family photos, etc).  Linux was actually unstable
> at this point as well (kernel panic?), but I have backups of everything.

good move.   also, keep in mind that linux can mount windows partitions
just as easily as it can ext2 partitions.   you can boot linux, traverse
the windows filesystem and copy important files to linux space where
they'd be safe.

as far as kernel panics, the most common reasons are serious hardware
problems, forgetting to run lilo and a root filesystem in the wrong
place.

> I'm trying to rebuild my system from scratch now, but traces of grub
> seem to be lingering around, even after I formatted my master hard drive
> (the slave was also formatted as an extended DOS partition and contains
> only my backup files).  When I try to reinstall Win 98 (I've run setup
> from both windows and MS-DOS), I get numerous errors regarding system
> files, but I also get one that reads something like 'boot virus!' when I
> run setup for windows.  I went into the BIOS and turned off the boot
> virus protection so that setup would run, but I still get tons of system
> errors (.vxd, .dll, and stack errors).

btw, some versions of windows (like 2k) report foreign bootloaders like
lilo or grub as boot sector viruses.  don't take them seriously.

> Windows is now barely functional, extremely unstable, the boot virus
> protection is still disabled, I can barely run Netscape in order to
> write this e-mail, and I'm at a loss for what happened.
> 
> I'm most likely overlooking something obvious, but...
> How do I eliminate all traces of grub so I can start from scratch?
> Was there an uninstall program for Linux that I missed?

nope.

> What is kernel panic? I heard it mentioned on the list recently...

there are lots of different kinds of errors that can happen when an
operating system initializes.  some of them are harmless "you don't seem
to have a microbus channel!".   some are more serious but non-fatal
"module eepro.o failed to initialize".   some are fatal.  not being able
to find a root filesystem, for instance, is always fatal.

here's the good news:

unless you are a microsoft employee who does kernel development, a
kernel panic is REALLY hard to fix in windows.  however, under linux,
kernel panics are usually easy to fix.  it's much easier to fix a
motorcycle that has "no power" than it is to fix a motorcycle that has
flakey behavior or intermitant problems.

> How can I load Linux so that it runs completely separate from Windows,
> (ie. no bootloader, stability of one doesn't affect the other, etc.)?
> Is this even the real problem?

you're probably correct about this, although i wasn't aware that this is
a problem for windows 98.   AFAIK, 98 is happy to share the hard drive
with another OS.  this is the most common scenario for non-NT type OS's:

1. install windows
2. install linux

when you install windows, it'll probably want to take the whole hard
drive.  there are two options that people usually take:

1. partition the hard drive before installing windows.  use linux fdisk
or cfdisk for this purpose.  let windows take hda1.  when you install
linux, let it take the other partitions.

2. install windows.  use a program like fips to split off a big chunk
of your hard drive.  use linux fdisk or cfdisk to partition the big
chunk however you want.

> Hopefully some of you dual-booters out there may have run across this
> before.

it can be a tricky business.  however, it *should* be straight forward
with 95/98.

apparently, fdisk /mbr has some caveats that i never knew about.  you
may want to look at:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=fdisk+/mbr&hl=en&scoring=r&selm=0033.01IDTC5GCSDG72PNOH%40csc.canterbury.ac.nz&rnum=1

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=fdisk+/mbr&hl=en&scoring=r&selm=49l6c6%242k9%40reuters2.mitre.org&rnum=6

hth

pete

-- 
The mathematics [of physics] has become ever more abstract, rather than more
complicated.  The mind of God appears to be abstract but not complicated.
He also appears to like group theory.  --  Tony Zee's `Fearful Symmetry'

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