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Installing Win95 on existing linux box
Hi,
Recently I was asking a question about installing Win95
on existing linux box. The issue and the answers I have
receievd are attached, for you who faces this question too.
Zachi
---------------------------------------------
Isaac Miller,
E-mail: either - zachi@netvision.net.il
or - zachi@bimacs.cs.biu.ac.il
Phone : 972-3-6730140 Fax : 972-3-6730492
---------------------------------------------
The issue:
You are happily running your PC for quite some time selecting
upon each booting whether to load linux (your default, right?)
or DOS. This is done by LILO. Now, you want to install Win95
over the DOS partition. How will LILO work for you thereafter?
Answer (only from what I got through the list, I didn't do it yet):
Since Win95 writes to the MBR (Master Block Record) of your disk,
LILO wouldn't work after you finish Win95 installation. Therefore,
as Asaf Sabag says:
"You will have to boot after setup Win95 from BootDisk or loadlin in
order to load linux, then run liloconfig, and setup lilo again, lilo
don't have any problems to support Windoze 95."
>From now on, there is some debut about whether this is the end of your
problems or not.
Viktorie Navratilova says:
"Winblow$ 95 *also* tends to overwrite the MBR every once in a while
after it's installed, for no apparent reason at all.
This yields a "Non-system disk or disk error"
message upon boot up from the hard drive, which almost gave me a heart
attack when I first saw that message on my computer."
Viktorie Navratilova continues on:
"Another danger that I encountered at the Linux Installation Party is that
some BIOS's have a "feature" called something insipid like "virus watch,"
which sends apocalyptic warnings to your screen if anything changes in the
MBR. Win 95 fully supports this by providing the "user-freindly"
scary warnings, and I assume this is why it overwrites the MBR every once
in a while, to make sure that everything is Kosher.
This feature can be a hassle when trying to save partition schemes,
because FIPS will barf when it can't change the MBR, complaining that it
is read-only.
The solution is to simply find the feature setting (either in the BIOS or
in a covertly hidden Win 95 window) and turn it off.
Then FIPS should run like a charm."
On the other hand Evgeny Stambulchik says (refering to the above):
"I've never seen that - having 3 PC's running win95/Linux w/ lilo for
a year total runtime."
At this point, I leave it to you to see for yourself and maybe add your
own experience to the list.