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From: bill@kepler.ucsd.edu (Bill Reynolds)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: Removing 386BSD from the hard disk (FAQ)
Date: 22 Jul 92 13:32:10
Organization: Institute for Nonlinear Science, UCSD
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <BILL.92Jul22133210@kepler.ucsd.edu>
References: <1992Jul21.152225.2082@lgc.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: kepler.ucsd.edu
In-reply-to: danson@lgc.com's message of Tue, 21 Jul 1992 15:22:25 GMT
In article <1992Jul21.152225.2082@lgc.com> danson@lgc.com (Doug Anson) writes:
Doug> After many hours rebuilding kernels, etc.. the time came
Doug> for me to uninstall 386BSD so that I can continue with
Doug> my work (arg!!). Anyway, I just tried reinstalling DOS.
Doug> I was able to produce a DOS partition (386BSD occupied
Doug> my entire disk), format it and install the dos system
Doug> onto it. When I then tried to reboot the machine off of
Doug> the hdisk (thus DOS), my system can no longer boot off
Doug> of the hdisk! It simply resets again and again after
Doug> trying....
Doug> Could it be that the some part of the 386BSD boot strap
Doug> on the hdisk is still there? When I fdisked the hdisk in
Doug> DOS everthing seemed to work fine.
This one is in the install notes, but it took me also about a day to
finally find it (thanks to Dwight Cass). I nominate this for entry
into the FAQ list.
>From INSTALL.NOTES in the BSD distribution:
To erase 386BSD from the dedicated disk, simply refor-
mat the system. Some versions of MS-DOS require the master
boot record to be rewritten as well, using the MS-DOS "fdisk
/mbr" command.
Other versions of MS-DOS require that the boot record
lose its validity before being rewritten by fdisk. This is
accomplished by cat'ing a file to the "raw" partition 'd' of
the drive, "cat /386bsd >/dev/rwd0d", and then reformatting
under MS-DOS. If you are using an old version of MS-DOS,
you can use this technique to delete the 386BSD partition as
well. This technique usually works (not always, however). As
such, we strongly recommend that you obtain the most up-to-
date version of MS-DOS (5.0 or better) and save yourself the
headache.
--
_______________________________________________________________________
Bill Reynolds |
bill@kepler.ucsd.edu |