dd command to clear start of harddrive

[John Summerfield]

Nigel Henry wrote:
> On Thursday 25 October 2007 01:23, John Summerfield wrote:
>> Nigel Henry wrote:
>>> This is not directly Fedora related.
>>>
>>> I connect to the Internet through my Smoothwall, and a serial modem.
>>> Recently the machine that the Smoothwall is running on has been playing
>>> up. Harddrive spinning up and down. I have another older machine
>>> (1.33GHz, 64MB RAM, and 6GB harddrive) which had Win 2000 pro on it, and
>>> was trying to install a backup Smoothwall on it. The Smoothwall installs
>>> ok, and lilo is installed, but when I reboot the BIOS does the memory
>>> check, and all I get next is half a screenfull of "40's" printed out.
>>> they remain for a few seconds, then I just get a prompt that I can't do
>>> anything with.
>>>
>>> I am wondering if something has been left behind on the harddrive from
>>> the Win 2000 install, that linux has not been able to remove.
>> Almost certainly that is not the problem,
>>
>> You need to read the lilo documentation, it will probably explain to you
>> exactly what is wrong.
> 
>> Cheers
>> John
> 
> Thanks to Andy for the dd syntax, but sadly, although it cleared the start of 
> the drive, I still couldn't get the Smoothwall to boot up post install, just 
> an "L" followed by a string of 40's after the BIOS memory check. All a bit 
As I said.

> weird, as when I bought the machine about 4 years ago when I first started 
> with computers, it had Win 98 on it, and that worked ok. I passed the machine 
> onto my son, and he somehow got Win 2000 pro installed on it. I know that was 
> booting ok, because I tried it. It got as far as wanting the password to get 
> in, but as I don't know his password I couldn't progress further, but at 
> least it was booting, so it doesn't seem to be a problem with booting from 
> the harddrive. 
> 
> Could a failing cmos battery cause this sort of problem? I cycled down to town 
> today, but forgot to buy a new one.
> 
> John. Lilo is possibly the problem, but I can't see how to re-install it in 
> the MBR. Saying that though, on the other machine where the Smoothwall is 
> working ok, there is no problem, and I couldn't be posting this if lilo was 
> screwed up.

I don't care whether the other machine works, it's irrelevant.

Read the freaking documentation.



-- 

Cheers
John

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