From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Nov 1 16:25:35 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from hotmail.com (f5.law6.hotmail.com [216.32.241.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2C8137B918 for ; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:25:31 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:25:31 -0800 Received: from 203.11.225.5 by lw6fd.law6.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Thu, 02 Nov 2000 00:25:31 GMT X-Originating-IP: [203.11.225.5] From: "Aaron Hill" To: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: How to Erase/Zero a Boot Sector? Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2000 00:25:31 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 02 Nov 2000 00:25:31.0589 (UTC) FILETIME=[68BAAF50:01C04463] Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Hello, Can someone tell me how to erase (or just zero?) the boot sector of a given partition. I know about DOS's fdisk /mbr which kills the master boot record. What I want to do is erase the boot sector of a given partition - but leave the rest of the partition intact. I'd image dd can help but I don't know what to pass it for the if (input file) operand. Perhaps a file with 1024 zeros in it? If this would work do you know how best to create a file with 1024 zeros in it? :-) FYI - I'm currently toying with getting a IBM T20 laptop to run fbsd 4.1.1 (dual boot with Win2000). I've been through the mail list archives and seen the problems that exist. I'd be glad to hear about any *solutions* people have for getting this dual boot setup working (with Windows NT/2000). Setting the partition to type 131 (extfs2) and fdisk /mbr didn't help. Thanks Aaron Hill _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message