Question about the dual-sector file FAT32.BIN boot record.

[steveh]

Still fighting with installing Reactos with manual workarounds (because the CD ISO installer hates inactive primary NTFS partitions)

i did the following:

In win98 build reactos with the help of the "reactosBE environment", then i have c:\reactos.
I then change the FREELDR.INI to boot from the good partition (the 2nd is win98 in my case).
Copy FREELDR.SYS to c:\
save the sector 1 of the partition.

And then i copied bytes 1-512 of "FAT32.BIN" to sector 1, and bytes 513-1024 to sector 14.
But the result is an immediate black screen freeze at booting.
(and the partition is defect: win2000 does no longer identify it as FAT32, but as unknown)

So i imagine sectors 1 + 14 to be manipulated with FAT32.BIN was not correct? Can any "guru" please give me a hint about "FAT32.BIN" and copying correct data to correct sectors....?

Update:
After still unsucessfully experimenting around with boot sectors, i finally got reactos working with the "avldr.exe" in pure dos mode.

[steveh]

I managed to install the famous freeldr bootsector manually.

The trick i found out myself is to leave unchanged the first 80 bytes of windos98 bootsector, and to overwrite only bytes 81-255 of sector 0 with the bytes 81-256 from fat32.bin

I suppose that in bytes 1-80 of sector 0 are stored some important partition parameters of MY PARTITION, so it is forbidden to overwrite that with data from the reactos build fat32.bin.
If you do overwrite that, partition will malfunction.

The bytes 257-512 of fat32.bin however must be copied integrally to sector 14 of the partition.

8)