Quote Originally Posted by ssj2kite
Heya, I just got 2 floppies!!!!

So, you said before you I should copy my first 512 bytes (mbr) to a floppy, and boot from that. So could you maybe give me instructions on exactly how to do it, otherwise I would probably mess up.


Howdy ssj2kite,

2 floppys (grin),

Well, i suggest you read over the previous posts really well.


>>
Well I have an ide0 and an ide1, but ide0 has hda and hdb in it, and ide1 has hdc (cd drive) in it. So that means it's 1 disk, or it's 2 being used as 1.
>>


Yes, i know it has hda and hdb in it ... what are in those !!!! not enough info m8. It's always incomplete !!!.

What does,

/proc/ide/ide0/hda/model say
/proc/ide/ide0/hdb/model say


On face of it. it seems you have two hard drives and 1 cdrom !,

In other words the resizing of XP wasn't neccessary. You must have __some__ documentation from your OEM that lists what you actually bought!


It's been a hectic week, this week


>>
So, you said before you I should copy my first 512 bytes (mbr) to a floppy, and boot from that.
>>


What i'm basically saying is that you are better off working from a "floppy" as then you wont be mucking up your primary boot sector as a result experimental fix attempts. Which just makes things worse.

And to work everything out before hand, before actually doing anything specific. Even on paper if possible. Double check what your doing and make __back ups__

It's the safest way to go about this.

As you already know, the mbr is a somewhat sensitive area.

It's already been stated but ...

As root,

Put floppy in drive, and zero it...

]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 count=1440

Copy mbr to a floppy ...

]# dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1

The whole first sector is now on the floppy. Both bootstrap and table. To get only the bootstrap use ...

bs=446 count=1

Somewhat better though, copy the mbr (bootstrap + table) or (just bootstrap) to a disk image. Which allows you to open it in a hexeditor to make edits. A hexeditor __only__. Though it means working with hex, and it is prone to error. So double check any of that first. If the image that your working with on the floppy has problems, then __don't__ copy it to your mbr. It must work off the floppy first.

]# dd if=/dev/mbr of=mbr-test.img bs=512 count=1

To get the image on the floppy do ...

]# dd if=mbr-test.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1

The same variation apply to the bs= and count= switches.

If you think the floppy might have cruft on it that may get in the way, zero it.

You are going to need more than two floppys i think ssj2kite

Be very carefull with "dd". It is a very powerful and obiediant utility, and you will be using it as either "root" or as "su root" (super-use), i would suggest the later.

If you point "dd" at a file/device and get the switches back to front etc ... you can easily trash your whole system, so, caution !

How did it go on the "Dell Utilities" issue. Have you looked into that. As i think that may the crucial thing that is preventing you from recovering your system, as normally, what already has been tryed should have worked.

Was pcplus forums helpfull, they will have much better experiance with things concerning secret OEM partitions on windows system than i would. And you are probably just doing yourself a diservice by not cheking into that enquirery as a result.

www.pcplus.c.uk/forums


jm
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