[plug] blowing away WindowsME

[Sol]

Steve Grasso wrote:

>
>BTW blowing away an MBR, Windows or otherwise is easy. Boot from a Linux boot 
>disk - any will do eg. the one mentioned above, Toms Root Boot etc. At the 
>prompt type: 
>
>dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
>
Thanks for the tip Steve. I was on the verge of using Tom's when I gave 
Mandrake a go and it worked. Why RH7.1 wouldn't boot from disk is beyond me.

>
>
>Incidently, when I'm replacing any OS with another on any HDD, I do this as a 
>matter of course after saving the original MBR first. It's not so important 
>with Win9x, but I've found it necessary for WinME/NT/2k/XP. I also usually 
>switch the BIOS boot virus checker off first. YMMV
>
Good point. But ME is a bad product even by M$'s low standards. If my 
brother does decide to return to WinWorld, which may prove to be a 
necessity as a result of certain proprietry apps which he is required to 
use for his work (mortgage broking), it won't be ME.

Actually he seems to like Mandrake so far but it's not all 
peachy-creamy. The winmodem is a dead loss - and no linmodems.org 
doesn't help. This can be got around with an external modem so there's 
no drama. Apart from that he may be forced - against his will - to use 
some proprietry software called Mortgage Broker Assist, which so far has 
been more of a hindrance than a help.  He's also having some trouble 
with power management. His battery runs down even faster than it did 
with Windows which doesn't make sense. I checked top which said that 
kapm-idled was using anywhere between 60-90% of the CPU. Weird....

Happy New Year all!!!

Sol

>