i suspect puppy (211) is doing something to my mbr?

[amish]

no proof yet it's just weird. it could be a number of things. i checked the sectors, they seem to be okay. it COULD always be a virus, but i doubt that. if i link it to something i'll post more here.

i boot win98/dos 7 to load puppy from dos grub. it's been working okay for a bit, but the first time this happened i had clicked "grub editor" and so when i rebooted and noticed it didn't boot, i used a 98 cd and fdisk /mbr... and that fixed it. i rebooted a few more times, it still worked.

note- i didnt ACTUALLY RUN grub editor. i clicked on it from the Menu in puppy, and when it came up i looked at it and went "nah" and clicked X. originally, my reaction was "DO NOT EVEN RUN IT, clicking X doesn't stop it from rewriting the mbr!"

but this has happened one time since. the other new things i've been running are diff -r (yeah i dont think so either) and tkdvd burner, and gcombust. i also doubt these are responsible, but they are the only other new things i've run.

i can't figure out why sometimes i have to put the mbr back now. as far as i know, i haven't done anything else. so it's a little mystery... and puppy is suspected, but not necessarily to blame. some bug report huh? if this was posted in the wrong place, i'll understand if it's moved. still- anyway.

[GuestToo]

there are programs in Puppy that can write to your mbr ... grub is one, dd is another ... grubconfig is a script that runs the grub executable to optionally install grub to the mbr

unless you actually run one of these programs with the appropriate parameters, Puppy should not touch the mbr

i've been running various versions of Puppy for quite some time, and it has never touched my mbr, except once i used dd to backup the mbr because i knew if i installed Win XP it would write over the mbr without asking ... then i used dd to restore the mbr after installing XP ... that was the only time Puppy has ever touched my mbr

can Puppy rewrite the mbr ... yes ... but it should not do that, unless there is a bug, or corrupted files, or a malicious program installed

[Pizzasgood]

My MBR spontaneously combusted once. I though my motherboard had died or something (it was old and forgetful, to the point that I physically removed the floppy because it couldn't make up its mind whether it was a little floppy, big floppy, or none of the above). I don't know what did it, as I hadn't done anything that would have messed with it for months.

A couple other times that computer booted up and said "no operating systems detected," but it was always solved by rebooting a couple times. This particular instance was the exception and was only solved by fixing the MBR.

[Gn2]

Tempermental BIOS ? What is condition of the CMOS battery.
Hard drive not probe reporting own I.D. properly - sector reads sometime odd ?

Does BIOS still show correct CHS specs -

Forgetting non-bootable floppy in tray @ bootup - then removing it to continue -sometimes confuses BIOS at next boot.
"No operating systems" or "floppy failure" Msg. type of thing

If hardware - sooner or later all will be apparrent
Software - sometimes things happen BEOND logic
They never should yet just DO !

[Pizzasgood]

I'm not sure what it was. I replaced the battery and it didn't help, so I figure either the floppy, the cord, or the mobo was wearing out. I don't have access to that machine anymore except on weekends, and since removing the floppy and neglecting an occasional hiccup, it still runs fine, so I'm not worried about it. It will likely be replaced in a year or two (my brother can no longer play new games on it, considering it has "only" a 450MHz PIII), then I'll reclaim the leftovers and find some use for it.