Ooopsie

[tw]

Originally Posted by BrianR

Now, the next little glitch, how oh how do I get my multiboot back? I'm afraid to change anything else lest this happen again. Anyone have any ideas?

NT's Boot.ini should look something like this to multiboot both an NT and a Linux partition:
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition
(1)\winnt="Windows NT
Workstation 4.0"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition
(1)\winnt="Windows NT
Workstation 4.0 [VGA mode]"
/basevideo /sos
C:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

This says Windows NT 4.0 can be booted from Disk controller zero, Hard drive zero on that first controller, and from the first partition on that disk. The switches (words that begin with / ) provide additional information on how that bootup procedes. Meaning of switches in boot.ini can be learned in http://www.sysinternals.com

Normally, Linux loads by overwriting a boot sector with information unique to that drive and computer. Your previous installation may have copied that boot sector into the file bootsect.lnx using a program such as:
/usr/sbin/rdev/boot/vmlinuz .

Now you must copy that file bootsect.lnx to the root directory of the NT partition so that Boot.ini can find and execute the unique bootstrap loader for your disk and computer.

bootsect.lnx should not be larger than 512 bytes.

There are other methods to multiboot an NT machine. This is just the one I am more familiar with. Of course this procedure assumes both the NT partitions and Linux partitions were intact and that the bootstrap loader did already exist in the Linux partition (or can be found in the NT partition). That Linux file in the NT partition would be saved with the attributes of system and read only meaning that special considerations are necessary to see the file. For example, the Windows Explorer must be optioned to see hidden and system files. Or using Windows command prompt, the command might be:
dir c:\*.lnx /ah or
dir c:\bootsect.* /ah or
dir c:\bootsect.* /ah /s