# Restoring Old Boot Menu

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 13, 2004, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097 "2004-06-13T07:21:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rayray5884](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@rayray5884](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rayray5884)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097/1 "2004-06-13T07:21:13Z")

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A while back I installed Mandrake on an extra partition on my hard drive. After installation the Mandrake installer automatically created a new boot menu giving me the option to select between Mandrake and XP. All was well. A while later I needed to do a clean installed of XP Pro over my old XP Home and now my boot menu is gone. Mandrake is still sitting there on the other partition but I don’t have access to it. How do I get it back??? Thanks in advance!

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**Author:** ![biqu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@biqu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biqu)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097/2 "2004-06-13T10:12:19Z")

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> [@rayray5884](#):
>
> Mandrake is still sitting there on the other partition but I don’t have access to it. How do I get it back??? Thanks in advance!

The easiest method requires you to have created a bootable floppy disk when you installed Mandrake. Booting from that floppy disk should load Mandrake from its partition, and then you can restore Mandrake’s MBR (master boot record) by running lilo or grub as root.

Otherwise read [this article](http://networking.earthweb.com/netos/article.php/3344241) for help.

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**Author:** ![leenmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f1d935/32.png) [@leenmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leenmi)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097/3 "2004-06-13T14:39:35Z")

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If you don’t have a boot floppy (like me, who doesn’t have a floppy drive to put one in) your distribution CD can act as a rescue disk.

Boot from CDROM  
Instead of re-installing or upgrading, hit F1 for more options  
Enter “rescue” at the prompt  
The first option in the menu is Re-install boot loader.

These instructions are for Mandrake. Other distros provide similar functionality, or you can simply boot from cdrom or floppy, mount your root partition to /mnt and execute “/sbin/lilo /mnt/etc/lilo.conf”. But I’d check the syntax first.

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**Author:** ![rayray5884](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@rayray5884](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rayray5884)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097/4 "2004-06-13T19:07:36Z")

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Easy enough! I new it wasn’t complicated, should have thought about that in the first place! Luckily I had disk 1. Don’t know where the others went but oh well. One more question related to this. Maybe it’s just as easy but I’m not sure. How does one edit the order of the bootloader and the amount of time of automatically selecting the top option?

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**Author:** ![leenmi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f1d935/32.png) [@leenmi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leenmi)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2004, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/restoring-old-boot-menu/250097/5 "2004-06-13T20:50:36Z")

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Mandrake control center.

Or, edit /etc/lilo.conf and write your lilo config to the MBR when you are done. But I would go with Mandrake Control Center first. It’s in the Boot section.