I have Linux installed on a seperate hard drive than Windows NT. When I first installed it I had the first hard drive (containing NT) shut off at the BIOS level so that the two hard drives could run their OS without needing the other. My problem is that Linux bypassed the BIOS and still wrote the LILO boot sector on my first hard drive. Now I need to remove that or else to boot either OS I need both hard drives. If you can tell me how to remove LILO without destroying NT I will be very grateful for the help.
Boot up in Windows NT, go to the command prompt, and run this command: fdisk /mbr
This will remove LILO without damaging anything. After doing this you will not be able to boot into linux unless you have a boot disk.
Whyu does everyone give me this answer? Windows NT does not have FDISK
If it was that simple I would not need help. I'm sure there is some way that the makers of LILO included to remove it. Does anybody out there know ?
You can use a win9x or dos boot floppy from another system, be sure fdisk is on the floppy also. Boot the system with the floppy and run: fdisk /mbr from the floppy.
I have had to do this to a NT system at work as well.
its easier than that. but first, philosophy: If Linux put lilo in the MBR, Linux knows more about it than NT, so let Linux remove it.
How? you ask. simple. not only is lilo a boot loader, it is a command you can execute from the Linux command promot (log is as root for this). you've got options here. if you like, you can have lilo boot NT by default, and only show you a lilo boot prompt if you press left control. or, you can have lilo show you a prompt, and wait x seconds, before booting its default system. Lilo is very configurable. But if you really MUST remove it, sorry, but I don't remember the exact LILO options to use. But there's hope. from the command prompt in Linux, type "man lilo" and a wonderful manual page will appear telling you all about LILO, including how to configure it, install it, and uninstall it, all from command line parameters. Good luck.(If you only knew the power of the man pages...)
Okay, I want to be *absolutely* certain before doing this. At one time before I had OS/2 and NT on a system, I deleted the OS/2 partition and couldn't access *anything* when I tried to reboot.
I have moved all my valuable data to the WinNT side, and simply need to remove Linux from the system--not that I want to, but space limitations force me to do this :-(
SO... I boot to Linux, thank you LILO, I run /sbin/lilo -u to get rid of her. When I reboot, are you for sure, sure, sure that a WinNT loader will appear and put me into Windows?
What can I do on the WinNT side to be sure I have a way to boot from floppy, just in case. I have the 3 startup diskettes and an Emergency Repair Disk, but won't I need something that says which address on the hard disk to start loading WinNT from? Is that in one of the startup diskettes or do I need to create some other kind of boot diskette?
Why bother trying to uninstall LILO? just get rid of "Windowse" NT! Linux is a much better system!!!
Trying to uninstall LILO from linux didnt work for me. It said that it did, but really didn't and all I ever got was "LI" at boot startup. Formating the drive and doing fdisk /MBR didnt work either. I was stuck with LILO so I had to buy a new drive.
Well, I guess I have joined the LILO nightmare club. For the record, I have installed Red Hat 6.0 and its LILO boot loader on several machines with no adverse consequences. I decided to try Caldera OpenLinux 1.3 on a machine I have at home (I thank my lucky stars I didn't try it at work) -- the result was a corrupted boot loader that always hung after displaying 'LI'.
I can't even begin to communicate how frustrating this was. The 'fdisk /mbr' trick did not work for me. I also could not seem to manipulate the LILO from within Red Hat. (Note --> I reinstalled Red Hat because OpenLinux was not even bootable after its successful install.) I did manage to place a new Red Hat LILO on the master boot record, but as soon as I selected the win98 image I would return to my favorite 'LI' trap. Unfortunately the cheapest solution in my case was to wipe the drive clean. I will never try to set up a dual-boot OpenLinux system again. I am curious to know which flavor of Linux all of you have had your trouble with. I am also interested in hearing from someone who knows of a better way I could have handled this. Please don't write back to try 'fdisk /mbr'.
I don't know if this will work for Windows NT, for I accidentally munged a Win95 installation here at work by installing lilo (the problem is that I'm using a umsdos-based distro :). fdisk /mbr didn't work for me, I tried it at least 50 times (why? I don't know... :). I finally tried restoring the Win95 boot files using SYS and the next boot worked fine. fdisk /mbr only works if you installed lilo to the MBR. If you installed lilo to the WinNT partition accidentally, then you need to use SYS to restore it (disclaimer: I have absolutely no NT experience, so if SYS isn't implemented like it is on 9x, then this won't work).
Bought another drive because of LILO??
I used Partition Magic to remove all Linux
partitions (fdisk can't deal with it)and...
no problem.
before you bought a new hard drive you should have tried this. You will lose everything on the hard drive, but you will have your drive. while in Linux, before removing the files, as root try: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda
this starts from the beginning of hard drive and wipes it. It works great.
FDISK /MBR will work sometimes. I just removed lilo from a win98 mandrake 7.1 configuration. Never buy a new drive due to unwanted data. Most drive makers will have software you can download from thier site. The software is called "ON TRACK" and creates a bootable diskette. It has many usefull tools but the one you want is called a Zero fill. It does just that. It goes from one end of the drive to the other changing every bit to stste "0". This is the lowest level of formatting you can get and unles your drive is physically damaged you should be ready to start fresh.
I tried fdisk /mbr, partiton magic, fdisk from win98 startup disk.
Deleted all the old partition and formatted the entire disk.
But when ever I boot from the hard disk the Linux boot prompt appears and then the system starts to load lilo but fails, It agin search for lilo and fails again and keep doing this for unlimited time.
It never goes to the io.sys, msdos.sys or command.com.
I tried typing dos and windows at the linux boot prompt but it does not work.
I do not know what to do and how to get rid of lilo.
I was running a system with Linux and Windows NT on separate drives. LILO suddenly started only showing "LI" when trying to boot. The unfortunate nature of business is NT is the more important OS (although not the one I prefer) and I had to get it to boot immediately. Fdisk /mbr from a dos disk had me up and running immediately. Thanks for the suggestions.
Well me neither can remove LILO. People complain on Bill Gates but I say Linus are the evil satan that does not let us go...
There are a few other problems that can cause a boot to show just "Li" - other than a corrupted master boot sector. When Linux first boots, it relies on the BIOS to point it to the right partition. But BIOSes are limited to 1024 cylinders. Because of the ways they fake disk geometry, this usually means the bios can only see about 8 GB of your hard drive. Linux boot codes are in two pieces - on the MBR of drive 1, and on the boot sector of the partition mounted as /boot (hdax <> 1). If you get "Li" - it can also mean that your /boot partition is beyond where the BIOS can see it. There's an info sheet on it at Suse - http://sdb.suse.de/sdb/en/html/1024_Zylinder.html Good luck with your multi-boots!
- mike
Yeah, Linux really really really sucks for this. Our 8 gig drive was rendered useless with similar "LI" stuff. Now, upon moving drives around (got a new cd burner), we can't even get our 25g working at all (It has lilo, the lilo booted to the 8g for linux and to the 25g for windows... so unfortunately the 25g is tainted!). The 25G just boots and says "L 01 01 01 01" and repeats "01 " forever.
Thanks, Linux. Never again will I do a dual boot system. I even wiped the 8G with a perl script, didn't help.
This is what WORKED for me (without data loss).
Symptoms: Linux HAD been booting fine witn System Commander 2000 but I booted from a floppy and it installed LILO on it. Now Linux could see 2 of my 4 partitions and Windows 98 was rendered GONE!
Fix:
1) Booted from a Win98 Startup disk. Used fdisk /mbr.
2) Used the TWO rescue disks created during Partition Magic's install (I have version 5) to boot with.
3) Used Partition Magic (running from the 2nd floppy) to see and manipulate my partitions.
4) Used the UNHIDE partition to unhide my C and E drives.
5) Voila! Windows can boot just fine.
Hope this helps. Again, no data loss!
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