[nflug] Disk Image/Restore

[Jonathan Skulski]

> If you were to completely write zeros to the entire drive, then copy in
> your 98 or xp, you would not have to blank the mbr, it would just fire
> up. We've only done this stuff a thousand times around here. What I do
> know, is that it doesn't hurt to run either fixmbr or fdisk /mbr to make
> sure that the previous mbr is not an issue with the new copy.

What do you mean copy your 98 or xp? Install it? dd from another
drive? Copy the folder from another drive? The first two options would
work, but it would also copy over the mbr. The last option would fail
to boot.

A mbr of all zeros will fail to boot windows.  From the wikipedia
article for Master Boot Record:

"In DOS or Windows 9x, the DOS-mode program fdisk with the
(undocumented) switch /mbr will rewrite the MBR code. In Windows 2000
or later, the recovery console can be used to write new MBR code to a
hard drive."

I zero'd the mbr out and it fails to boot. I don't know what kind of
moon computers you're using, but these ones failed to boot. These are
some new dells running xp, i don't know. Maybe it's a win98 thing.

Sorry this is getting off topic, but zeroing out your mbr is not a
good way to get windows to boot.

jsk
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