[plug] loadlin and Win95 and multi-boot menus

[Matt Kemner]

On Mon, 31 Aug 1998, The Thought Assassin wrote:

> > Can anyone remind me of what Win95 trashes (like the MBR) and the
> > easiest way to restore it?  I've just got a copy of the Bootdisk-HOWTO
> > but haven't yet read it through. Hoping for a shortcut!
> 95 _definitely_ trashes the MBR. It has no concept of multiboot,
> unfortunately. If you are using loadlin, you will only have to boot into 
> DoS mode (F6 or something to get a menu, but my memory is hazy) and invoke

F5 from memory
Personally I prefer loadlin on multiboot systems, mainly because I like
the idea of loadlin loading itself of DOS and then expunging DOS from
memory and letting linux take over....>:->
I also prefer having the config.sys menu because I can then choose linux,
win98, DOS, DOS with EMS support etc. from the one menu.  Also, to boot
linux with loadlin you only need two files: loadlin.exe and your
compressed kernel image.

To set up a config.sys menu all you need to do is put this in your
config.sys:

[MENU]
MENUITEM=LINUX, <BOOT LINUX>
MENUITEM=WIN, WinDoze98
MENUITEM=DOS, DOS without EMS
MENUITEM=EMS, DOS with EMS
MENUDEFAULT=LINUX,20
MENUCOLOR=7

[WIN]
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
....
...
REM your normal windows drivers here

[DOS]
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH
...
REM your normal dos drivers here

[EMS]
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS 
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.exe RAM HIGHSCAN 3096
...
REM your normal dos drivers here

[LINUX]
shell = C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /C C:\LINUX\LINUX /p


in your autoexec.bat you would then have a statement checking if the
%config% variable points to WIN and if so runs C:\WINDOWS\WIN

and you would then edit C:\msdos.sys
(remove system, readonly, hidden attributes first:)
attrib -r -h -s msdos.sys
edit msdos.sys
attrib +r +h +s msdos.sys

then search for the line "BootGUI=1" and change it to 0
and you are all set to boot linux (and you shouldn't need to worry about
win98 messing with your boot record - the only thing it repeatedly does
when you install eg. MSOffice or MS Internet Exploiter, is change BootGUI
back to 1)

Hope this helps someone :)
 - Matt