Topic: Install Over Windows XP

[tkman]

HI all.
Searched the forum but did not find anything about problems overwriting an old XP install.

I just tried to install SME over an old hard drive that had 2 flavors of windows installed.
The windows installs no longer work and I am not  interested in trying to revive them.
Anyway I thought the install would wipe the drive and reconfigure it so the XP installs disappear and a wonderful SME server appears.
Not quite. 
The install seemed to progress well and said it was complete and I needed to reboot the system.
When I rebooted it did not seem to wipe the bootsector so the old Windows XP versions are still present at startup.
That would not be sooooo bad if one of the OS's offered at boot time was SME but it does not show any signs that the install was completed after the reboot.
Any suggestions?
Any one seen this before?
Could this be the result of a faulty drive?
Hope to hear.
Thanks.

[idp_qbn]

tkman,

A possible solution:
For disks formatted with a FAT32 (or NTFS for that matter, I believe)  file system - Wipe the drive and prep for partitioning and reformatting as ext3 file system. Substitute the correct device identified above for /dev/sda1 below:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 bs=512 count=63

This should clear the Master Boot Record (MBR)  as well and return the disk to its factory settings.
Then you can go ahead and install SME.

Note:
sda is your first SATA drive; sdb is the second.
hda is your first IDE (PATA) drive; hdb is the second, etc.
sda1 is the first partition on your (first) SATA drive .
hdb2 is the second partition on your (second) IDE drive and so on.
Cheers
Ian

[Stefano]

HI all.
Searched the forum but did not find anything about problems overwriting an old XP install.

you should search also the wiki

HTH

[Stefano]

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1 bs=512 count=63

I would say that

Code: [Select]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=1

(i.e. dd to the device, not the partition)
will surely work

NOTE: be carefull to select the right hd

[fpausp]

If you are unfamiliar with the command-line you can use DBAN. Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers.

http://www.dban.org/

[tkman]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I'll try to wipe the disk.
It's a shame the SME install was not able to offer that as a install option.
Is there a technical reason why SME install could not do this?

[Stefano]

ask microsoft..

[christian]

ask microsoft..

Actually it is a good question. Many of us know of the "dd" work around to blow away the master boot record but I can't think of a technical reason why it couldn't be done on install other than we may not have that level of control with the installer. After all SME assumes it owns the entire disk and repartitions and adds its own boot code.

[janet]

christian

Best place for your request is in Bugzilla as a NFR (New Feature Request), but it may be a limitation of the installer, I don't know.

Another approach is to boot to the install CD in rescue mode, then run fdisk /dev/sdx
and delete the partition(s)

Another way, is to download delpart.exe and create a boot floppy/USB/CD and erase the partitions that way.

If you check Stefano's link,
http://wiki.contribs.org/Raid#Reusing_Hard_Drives
the documentation clearly refers to reusing disks that have had Windows on them.
ie
 Reusing Hard Drives

If it was ever installed on a Windows machine (or in some cases an old system) then you will need to clear the MBR first before installing it.

From the linux command prompt, type the following:

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=512 count=1

You MUST reboot so that the empty partition table gets read correctly. For more information, check: http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2154

[christian]

Hi Mary,
yes. I'm well aware of all this, it wasn't my point. I don't believe we can blame Mr. Softy for this one though. It was just a curiosity and I thought someone might know what the limitation is. But perhaps your point was only to educate others that tread here.

BTW, I don't think fdisk will clear out the MBR completely. I think it only alters the partition table which is at the end of the MBR. The issue I believe is the boot code at the front end of the MBR. This needs to be cleared. Hence if you wanted to preserve the partitions but only wipe the boot code you could do something like:

Code: [Select]

#dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdx bs=446 count=1

[CharlieBrady]

It's a shame the SME install was not able to offer that as a install option.
Is there a technical reason why SME install could not do this?

No, it should "just work". Please create a bug report.

[lloydh]

ask microsoft..

There is a solution from Microsoft I have been using for years but it is very hard to find.         You need a DOS bootable floppy that also contains DEBUG.EXE, boot from the floppy, run DEBUG and enter the following commands.

A 100
INT 13

RAX
0301
RBX
0200
F 200 L 200 0
RCX
0001
RDX
0080
P
Q

Or you can put the above in a text file called HDPART.SCR or similar and run the command DEBUG<HDPART.SCR.

There is meant to be a blank line after the INT 13 line and this will wipe the first hard disk, if you want to wipe the second hard disk change the third last line from 0080 to 0081.

[tkman]

I've just created a bug related to this. 
Thanks for all the suggestions and help.