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Why does W98 undo changes in the MBR?


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#1
goku5z

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Hi everyone. I have dual boot on my laptop: Windows 98 and Linux. I use Grub boot loader that displays a menu with the available systems to select. I recently updated Windows 98 (from CD) because of performance problems with Win Explorer. The Windows update modified the MBR (Master Boot Record) so now Windows automatically boots up when starting the machine.

I have the Grub boot loader installed in another small partition. To enable Grub to boot the machine, and so be able to chose from a list operating systems, I modified the MBR and set the small 'boot partition' as the 'active partition'. The next time I started the machine everything seems OK, Grub works as before handling the boot process.

The problem is that if i select Windows 98 to boot up, it does undo the changes in the MBR, setting the 'active partition' the 'Windows' partition. So next time I start my laptop Windows 98 boots up automatically, instead of letting Grub to manage the boot process. How can stop Windows undoing the changes in the partition table? I checked for a boot.xxx file in C: but I didnt find anything like that.

Any help would be massively appreciated. I'm not familiar with the windows booting system. Maybe it's a very simple and known thing. Thanks.

David.
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#2
Chadduss

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Have you enabled hidden files and system files? boot.ini is a system file and will not be shown if it is hidden. With the Grub prompt have you done "setup (hd0)" to install to the mbr? Just checking to see how you proceded.
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#3
goku5z

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>Have you enabled hidden files and system files?
Yes, I enabled hidden files but boot.ini is not there. I searched the system using the 'Find' utility but it wasn't found (only bootlog.txt and bootlog.prv).

>have you done "setup (hd0)" to install to the mbr?
I have done "setup (hd0,1)" to install the mbr in my second partition in hda (/boot). I tried also to do setup(hd0) (just in case) but it's the same.

I have also tried to disable my antivirus in case it was restablishing the MBR, but it didn't solve the problem.

I'd appreciate any other ideas you might have. Thanks.

David.
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