How to reinstall windows xp

[Mikkel L. Ellertson]

John Summerfied wrote:
> 
> Howver, this topic's made me think, maybe we have it wrong.
> 
> The standard MBR has code that looks for the first active partition and
> boots that. A while back, I had cause to examine Darwin's source and ut
> contains code (in Turbo Assembler) to do that.
> 
> If we (the Linux community) used a compatible MBR, perhaps using the
> code from Darwin or FreeDOS, and installed it in /dev/hda (or whatever)
> if there's no existing code there, then we'd get along much better with
> Windows.
> 
> GRUB, LILO or WhatEver would go in the /boot partition.
> 
> If Michael reinstalled Windows, then he could go into wherever it is in
> Windows he makes some other partition active and reactivate his /boot
> partition, boot Linux and add a stanza for Windows.
> 
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
Using Windows fdisk, you can only make a primary partition on the
first hard drive active. /boot does not need to be a primary
partition for LILO or Grub to work when the first stage in installed
in the MBR. For that matter, you do not need to create a /boot
partition with a lot of installs.

Just to complicate matters, how would you handle the case where
Windows is on the first hard drive, and Linux is on the second
drive? By installing the first stage loader in the MBR, this is
not a problem... I guess you could go into the BIOS and change
the drive that you boot from to handle this, but I can see problems
with a new user trying to do that. Besides, not all BIOS will handle
doing it.

Mikkel
-- 

  Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
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