Where/how can I learn and gain *complete* control of my MBR?

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Thats how I see it too. A relatively unsophisticated forum like this allows one to collate their thoughts, preparing them to overcome that barrier presented by the official forums. The experts there, if they deign to answer at all, invariably answer one of three ways: "Its beyond you newb", "RTFM" or a flood of unexplained terminal commands.

Probably less than one in a million linux users multiboot more than three OSes.



Glad to hear it! And of course, anyone that asks you will know as well.

When you get the error messages I got, no such "decision" is really even needed!

Win98's partitons *must* be formatted with Microsoft's Win98 FDISK to avoid certain troubles later on, and I have stacks of stories to prove that (at least to myself). Then, I have the MS-updated version of FDISK that can handle larger drives in the sense of accurately applying percentages-of-space rather than burning out a calculator while trying to translate and match the various and differing numeric representations of drive space.

With my 160s, each drive will get a 10% FAT32 primary at the beginning (Win2k, Win2k backup and a "shareall"), then each of those partitions will be followed by a 20% (of drive total) extended partition to be divided into 5% FAT32 (W98, 98bak and whatever else) and 15% NTSF (XP, XPbak and whatever else) logical drives ... and everything after that will either be partitions Win98 cannot see or else only on drive 3 (so as not to mess up the BIOS report at bootup). Oh, and you can be certain Win7's running partition absolutely *will* be one the first drive this time around!

You came late to the party. There have been a series of posts regarding leejosepho's adventures in multiboot that stretch back most of a year. This forum is stuffed with Autistics, and it seems that consensus is being met in that hes hearing things he wants to hear, and learning what he needs to know.

I'm not sure WHY you are complaining about anything. If you are having problems with multi-boot, go ask at the Debian forums.

True enough, I suppose, but now it has been completey wiped away and will not be back! I now know how to get Win7 to play well (or at least a little better) with others, and my drives are just about done being formatted in a way that will include no possibility (I think) of either Windows or Linux grumbling at the other later on. In any case ...

If you wish, please freely state whatever might be bothering you here. This is a social forum where some of us socialize even in these kinds of ways ...

Are you offended by that?

We have certainly done nothing offensive.

That worked just fine ... and after again enabling the other drives, I did (after thinking I would never need FDISK again) end up going back into FDISK to make some swap space larger ... and this time around, FDISK saw the SATA drive *first* (since it has the active partition, I am sure), followed by my *second" PATA and with my actual first drive out on the end. But at normal system startup (with FDISK hanging outside the floppy drive) that second PATA drive shows up between the two others, as it should.

Win2k is now in and running, and all is well so far.

Inadvertently, I finally got to the bottom line concerning Windows and drive letters:

1) Including Windows 7, any Windows OS can be installed on any drive and/or in any partition with any drive letter and still work just fine;

2) No Windows OS must be installed into "C" in order to run (even though that might not be a good idea because of the possibility of hard-coded applications being added later on);

3) Regardless of the drive or drive letter chosen during the installation of Windows 7, Windows 7 will always show itself as being in "C" while running;

4) "Disk Management" in any *other* OS (such as in a multi-boot system) can later change the short-hand *letter* of the Windows 7 installation without doing any harm at all, because, and again:
Regardless of the drive or drive letter chosen during the installation of Windows 7, Windows 7 will always show itself as being in "C" while running.

However, and as you had said: Later changing the drive letter of any Windows OS other than Windows 7 after installation will always render that OS (other than Windows 7) unuseable.

So, it looks like Microsoft has specifically made it possible for Windows 7 to be multi-booted even behind any other operating system without later causing trouble for anyone using hard-coded applications!

However, and as I had mentioned a few days ago, Windows 7 still nevertheless must be installed somewhere on the first drive in a system in order for its "startup repair" to later work, if ever needed.

Congrats, looks like you've got all your Windows OS up and running.

Yes, I sure do, and I thank you for your help along the way!

A question if you have to time to consider it:

What might happen now that I have "changed (moved) location" of my Win7 Favorites folder to the Favorites folder in my Admin account on another drive and in Win2k? I was in Win7 at the time I did that, of course, and I did *not* copy Win7's "desktop.ini" file along into the Win2k Favorites folder ... and then nothing in my Win7 Favorites folder would work until after I had logged out and returned. All is well at the moment, but now I wonder what might happen when I boot back into Win2k and click on a link in that Favorites folder Win7 now likely believes is its own.

Here is the "desktop.ini" file presently in the Win2k "Favorites" folder Win7 is using:

-------------------------------
[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID2={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}
ConfirmFileOp=0
CLSID={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}=%windir%\web\favorite.htm
-------------------------------

I suspect Win7 put that file there after my logoff and return (and while things were flickering for a moment).

Do I need to do something different before going back into Win2k?

Or, what will that "=%windir%\web\favorite.htm" part of that file mean/do to Win2k?

Edit: Actually, never mind here unless you think I need to know something. I just realized I have already accessed the WP link in that folder while here in XP, so whatever happens next in Win2k should be no different than right here where things are already okay!

The desktop.ini shouldn't be a problem. What caused the problems last time is permission.

If you just moved the favorite folder to another drive, it should be fine. However, if what you meant is sharing it with Win2000, then it depends. If both accounts are of the admin group, you likely won't notice any problem. If one of them is standard user, then it likely can only read but not change the favorites there.

For the moment, I have everything back to "as installed" ... just in case ...!

As you can see here below, making Toolbars in XP and Win7 has not changed anything in Win2k. But then how might XP or Win7 act if I actually move their own "Favorites" location to Win2k's folder? Their own files seem to me to be much different ... and yes, all accounts are system-named "Administrator".

So, any additional thoughts here? And if not, that is fine. No matter what, I do have the gap-jumping Toolbars I use most of the time anyway.

===============================
from Win2k's native "Favories":
[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID2={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}
ConfirmFileOp=0
CLSID={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}=%windir%\web\favorite.htm
===============================

===============================
same from XP's new Toolbar of Win2k's "Favorites":
[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID2={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}
ConfirmFileOp=0
CLSID={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}=%windir%\web\favorite.htm
===============================

===============================
same from Win7's new Toolbar of Win2k's "Favorites":
[.ShellClassInfo]
CLSID2={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}
ConfirmFileOp=0
CLSID={1A9BA3A0-143A-11CF-8350-444553540000}

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{5984FFE0-28D4-11CF-AE66-08002B2E1262}=%windir%\web\favorite.htm
===============================

===============================
from WinXP's own native "Favorites":
[.ShellClassInfo]
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll
IconIndex=-173
[email protected],-12693
===============================

===============================
from Win7's own native "Favorites":
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21796
IconResource=%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll,-115
IconFile=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll
IconIndex=-173
===============================

I have switched from IE a long time ago, so I haven't really tried it myself. Looking at the default setup on my machine, I don't think there'll be major issues. One thing I noticed is that IE8 has renamed the Links bar to Favorites Bar, and the sub-folder used to store the .url files also changed. So the links in your toolbar may not update across different IE versions.

Getting back to my MBR stuff ...

Along with my Windows systems all on my first drive with their loaders chained, I just added Debian along with Mint and Puppy on drive three ... and here is where things get interesting, at least for me:

Expecting to have to go back later and fix the Windows loaders, I just told the Debian installer to go ahead and put its (Debian's) loader on my first drive's MBR ...

... but then following a reboot, nothing there had been changed at all, and I suspect that is because the GRUB part of the Debian installer got confused by my having two PATA drives and one SATA ... but then earlier in the installation I had also told Debian's partitioner to flag its (Debian's) own unique "/boot" partition as bootable ...

... but now I cannot find Debian's loader even by using EasyBCD to specifically select Debian's "/boot" partition ...

... yet either the Debian installer for GRUB or EasyBCD has fixed the extra-and-bogus entries in the loader menu still working fine and being shared by Mint and Puppy. So ...

The plot now thickens, and I am both spellbound and looking forward to doing a little sleuthing in the morning ...

G'night, folks.

Since you are comfortable editing Grub, you can just disconnect the first 2 drives when installing Debian. Let it write to the MBR of the 3rd drive and copy the menu entry afterwards.


Debian will still write the MBR to sda. You need to check which drive Debian sees as sda. But then it really doesn't matter except for curiosity.


Hmm, if the entry is on Grub4DOS, then it's just being auto detected by Grub4DOS.

Today has been a day like never before ...!

I had not thought of that, and I will give that some thought. Overall, however, and no matter *what* I might do, it seems there is just no way all of my operating systems are *ever* going to see my three drives in the same order since one of them is a SATA my BIOS presents as being third but DOS then sees as being first. GRUB gets confused over that and sometimes a partitioner (such as during a Linux installation) will even say there are no other operating systems anywhere on my machine ... but then neither do all Windows systems see my drives in the same order.


I understand, and now get this:

Some kind of "protection script" (my term) clearly written and included within the "special" menu.lst file written specifically for Grub4Dos was what had been keeping Debian from "taking over" as I had expected and intended ... and I discovered that fact after someone had told me I did not need "all that fancy stuff" in that file and I had removed it ...

Wrong, wrong, wrong ... and now Grub4Dos (or possibly SuperGRUB) is my *only* shot at getting anything at all on this machine to load! After those "protection-script lines" (or whatever they are) had been removed, Debian's loader *did* take over the next time around ... but it did not do all that well and now I have some really important stuff to do tomorrow: Fix/build/construct/fabricate loaders!


Yes, but now after using Win7's "startup repair" to unsuccessfully try to get *its* loader working again, I can only get to the Grub4Dos menu.lst file via a Win98 startup disk (DOS).

Do you think there is any chance I got sabatoged today?!

Either way, however, I win in the end when I am free of so much dependence upon them f--cking Windows loaders!

What are the lines you removed? I'm not aware of any "protection script". The main reason Grub4Dos is usually untouched by the installers is because it places its menu.lst at an unusual location.


That's odd. Does Win7 still see all your partitions?

Acronis does something similar, at least in principle, in its "OS Selector". Any OS needing a different drive configuration of any kind can have that configuration written into and called from its menu entry, and then all things will be restored/returned to "system default" at the end of an OS' run. In any case, here is a sample entry from Grub4Dos:

#######################
title > Linux Puppy 511
fallback 4
find --set-root --ignore-floppies
root=/dev/sdc15 pmedia=atahd
kernel /boot/vmlinuz initrd initrd.gz
savedefault --wait=2
#######################

I had been told the "fallback" and "savedefault" lines in each entry did not need to be there, but either or both were actually what had been holding Debian back from "taking over" my MBR as I had expected.


Yes, but it turns out Debian had somehow begun using the beginning of my first drive to bounce system control over to its own drive (and I think that was my fault), so I was circumstantially back to that place of a couple of weeks ago when Win7 could not fix its own startup because it was not on the primary drive ... and I had since moved it so that would never happen again!

Oh well. KillDisk is running again, but only on one drive this time around.