Question : Boot.ini

How do I make a boot.ini entry that boots my second hard disk? I went to some sites but they were very vague.

Answer : Boot.ini

Well you can only do one or the other. You can't run two different boot loaders. So you have to choose which one you want.

Take a look here although it is referring to XP you can do the same with Win2000. Especially at this comment.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,3173500~root=unixdsl~mode=flat

"cangeceiro

Posts: 275
Joined 12-12-2001
Location: Indianapolis, IN
 In response to ziff
this is what i had to do, it is a doc for red hat but it worked the same for SuSE

Someone aksed, "Why not install into the MBR?" --- Upon initial install Red Hat will see and boot Win98 and ME from LILO, but we are using an NTFS partition and not a fat32. Although Linux can read-only NTFS, it is not recommended by most. In most cases Linux will fail to boot the NT install, even when it looks all good and you think it will. You may as well go ahead and do it right the first time rather than fdisk/mbr and adding to its headaches.

Make sure you make the boot disk. Otherwise this process will not work.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND INSTALLING INTO THE MBR - THIS MAY FAIL IS YOU DO SO

Once you have finished the Linux install make sure you can still boot XP/NT. You can? Now boot Linux using the boot disk I told you to make. You can do that too?

Now you need a formated DOS floppy to use. Once you have that you can boot into Linux using your boot floppy. Now go to the root drive (cd /) and type the following command.

df -h
You can 'man' the df command, bascically it will show you the current filesystem, the H is human readable. Look for the /boot part of it.

Then type the follwing command to copy the the boot sector info from the boot sector to the root of linux

dd if=/dev/hda4 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
the if=/dev/hda4 is supposed to be where you put the /boot partion so look at yours and replace as needed.

Do an ls to see if it is there, like it is supposed to be.

Now put in the dos floppy and do the following commands to mount and copy the file bootsect.lnx to the floppy

mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt

Mounts the ms-doss floppy so you can use it.

cp /bootsect.lnx /mnt

Copies the boot sector info to the floppy and the last command will list the floppy to ensure it is there.

ls /mnt

Is it there? Good. Now unmount the floppy drive.

umount /mnt

Now reboot into XP/NT and go to a Dos prompt with the following command.

Do this from the DOS promt

If you do this from Windows Explorer and Notepad, you will get a blinking cursor when you try to boot Linux from the boot loader.

Do it from the dos prompt

Start ---> run ---> cmd

This will open a dos box for your needs in editing the file boot.ini is in the c:\ directory.
Now let's move into the right direcoty and set the file properties to not read-only, not system, not hidden

cd \

attrib -r -s -h boot.ini

Remember to use edit from a dos prompt here

edit boot.ini

It should look something like this.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Now look at the bottom of the file and add the following to it

c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

Once you add that, it should now look closer to this.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

attrib +r +s +h boot.ini

Now copy the a:\bootsect.lnx file from the floppy to the root drive c:\ .
Simply put the floppy in the drive and copy the file a:\bootsect.lnx c:\ . Stay at the dos prompt and type the following commmand to copy it to your c:\ drive

copy a:\bootsect.lnx c:\

Now you should be able to reboot and have Linux as part of your XP/NT boot loader and hit Linux to boot Linux
--
Bang Bang Bang your head(on the desk) "