>Okay, here's a stumper for everyone (at least it is for me):


>My system is homemade with an Athlon 600, 17GB Maxtor HD (C:), 15GB Maxtor
>HD (D:), 30 GB WD HD (on a SIIG IDE card), CD-ROM and a TEAC burner.  ATI
>Rage Fury and SB Live.  320 Mb RAM.  Running Me primarily.

>I cleared off my D: drive for Redhat 7.1, no LILO - boot disk instead.
When
>I did this the first time, I couldn't boot into Windows (BSOD, Windows
>Protection Error, restart computer).  Couldn't go into safe mode, but
>startup disk would get me to command prompt.  I ended up reinstalling Me
>which fixed whatever was wrong, and bagged Linux on D:.

>So, this time, I unplugged my C: drive and reinstalled Redhat 7.1 on my D:
>drive.  Went fine except for email and news (topic for another message).  I
>booted from floppy a couple of times and worked fine.  I plugged my C:
drive
>back in booted up.  Same thing -- BSOD, same message as above.  Don't
>understand this at all.  I powered down and booted into Linux to make
>sure -- no problem.  I unplugged D: drive (Linux) and booted up.  Went into
>safe mode, restarted and Me booted back up.  I don't see physically
>connecting/disconnecting drives as a viable "dual-boot" system.  Any
>help/thoughts/solutions are welcome.


Okay. Been there done that. Got my fingers burnt. And learnt my lesson.
What is happening basically, is that Red Hat is over-writing your MBR
(master boor record). What this is, is basically is the first section of
your hard drive (usually your primary master) that stores boot information.
What this does is after your PC has POSTed (Power On Self Tested) and gone
through all the hardware (or whatever it does) it hands over to the hard
drive (actually the software) which must then start the operating system.
The OS basically pulls itself up - literally - by its BOOTstring, which is
where you boot from. I am really paraphrasing this from an article I read on
www.pcnineoneone.com. I may have also read a similar article while searching
on www.askjeeves.com.

What you need really is some kind of software that will manage the boot
process. The article above has a few links to some of these boot (partition)
managers. Linux also comes with some sort of boot manager, but I haven't
figured how to use it yet (Don't need to anymore anyhow).

I have successfully used a shareware program called BootIT. I know you could
use a utility that comes with Partition Magic as well (haven't used it).

BTW way. With this configuration, I've had WINNT, 98, Red Hat and later
Mandrake Linux on one PC all at once.

BTW. Are you reading Red Hat Linux for Dummies by any chance. I didn't like
their explanation of multi booting either. Perhaps some real person should
rewrite thier book sommetime.

Good luck.

Brendon

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