On Sat, 04 Nov 2006 11:43:19 -0500, kurt wismer <kurtw@sympatico.ca>
wrote:

>>
>> Are you saying windows alters the partition table of its own accord
>> sometimes, because that is apparently what happened, or do you mean it
>> sometimes overwrites whatever boot manager is in use with its own?
>
>apologies for my my flaky memory on this issue, i had to go and google
>it again for the specifics...
>
>as of win95 a drive id was introduced into the mbr that windows (not
>fdisk) places there on bootup (see this article by zvi
>http://groups.google.com/group/alt.c...7377e6dff955c)...


According to wiki, there is a 4 byte area available for the disk
signature before the 64 byte partition table at the end of the mbr.
It's used in connection with persistent mapping between partitions and
drive letters. This would explain the warnings he was getting without
shedding any light on what went wrong. I don't understand zvi's offset
220 (hex DC) remarks.


Jim.