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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!network.ucsd.edu!network!bill 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 |