yes i know this is very newbish: however, i would like to know if anyone has had to
install lilo again due to an overwriten mbr?

i know i have to use chroot but i cant seem to think straight any pointers?

thanks for your help in advanced

Well, you can boot into your linux system with your trusty ole boot disk, and then re-issue the lilo command to re-implement your MBR with the linux entries.

What's that you say? No bootdisk? tisk tisk tisk. However, there is one method around this (i found out first-hand when i...uh...forgot to make a bootdisk). Luckily there are some nice distributions out there that exists almost 100% on a cdrom such as Knoppix, even if you feel you don't have a need for a live cd distro, DOWNLAOD IT ANYWAYS. It can be extreamly useful in different situations. So, after you downloaded the cd, and burned it off, pop it in your cdrom, and reboot (of course letting your bios boot from a cd is nice). Knoppix will detect almost everything about your system, and boot into KDE for you. From there, you will see that all partitions on your hard disk should be mounted with icons on your desktop. Using this, you can pop a 3.5" diskette into your drive, and issue the mkbootdisk command to create it.

For example, after booting into Knoppix, you discover that your / partition is mounted on /dev/hda1, then you can issue the command:



This will use your kernel from your install and make a bootdisk for it. Then, you can use the bootdisk to boot back into your system, and re-issue the lilo command.

While you're in Knoppix, get to know it a little, it's an extreamly useful tool, and can be used as debian installer as well. I'm using Knoppix for a Linux Install Fest as a demonstration of the power of linux.

Oh, and by the way, using chroot to re-issue a lilo mbr can have some very weird and un-wanting side-effects.

well now you all get to hear my sob story in my explaination why i have to use chroot or reinstall:

i'm useing a tecra 740cdt laptop it hasnt a fdd and it wont boot from a cdrom
aside from that my only connection is the built in 28.8k modem: large downloads arent an option:

i was hopping someone has had this trouble before and used chroot to restore it long enough to boot into my ext2 partition and reinstall grub

The chroot command just changes the root directory location. You still need to be able to boot a linux system first. With no floppy disk drive and can't boot from CD its tough.

There are lots of distro that will install from windows but I don't know about just booting from. Knoppix is one version that will run from CD but don't know if you can boot with windows ( I assume) already running.