Can somebody help me here please. I installed lilo, it overwrote xp's mbr. Now I wont boot. I tried booting linux, starts just well, logon, then password, then hangs. can anybody tell me how to do this!! please its driving me nuts

Hi Please be clear with ur query Dual boot To Configue NT to boot Linux using LILO as Secondary Boot Loader. 1) First on ur PC Install Windows Operating System (NT or XP) 2) Now Install Red Hat Linux and in this process it asks for overwriting the MBR just say NO and it should be on the PARTION First Boot Record. Apart from this Create a boot Floppy also. 3) Start ur system with Linux Boot Floppy and u get the login screen and passwd supply it. 4) Take a NEW Floppy apart from boot floppy and At the Prompt say # dd if /dev/hda3 of=/boot/linux.ldr bs=12 count=1 (creates a file linux.ldr at /boot) # mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy # cp /boot/linux.ldr /mnt/floppy # umount /mnt/floppy 5) Remove the floppy and restart the system without any floppy disk ..... u get ur nt boot menu or xp boot menu 6) After getting the Windows Desktop Screen and copy the file linux.ldr from the second floppy to c:\ and edit c:\boot.ini by inserting a statement like c:\linux.ldr="LINUX" Restart the system without any floppy u get LINUX as Boot menu option selct it and Linux will get started. Any Problems Let ME Know .... waiting for ur reply

Emmanuel, read this, it may have some information that will help you. I had the same questions and was able to figure it out, read my post here http://computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/8997.html

Emmanuel, you are in luck! Why? Because you have the right idea! I am not sure exactly why it didn't work for you. I have had the same problems, then suddenly it just worked! I saved the original MBR though, so before I made it to work I was still able to go between the two systems. Here are my notes on how my system is set up: (This was published in another place also as a response to people arguing for having Windows boot loader in the MBR and boot Linux using c:\boot.ini . I have a different idea...) In case you care... I myself would like to load XP from Lilo and not the other way around ( I have seen the trick to add the lilo generated boot sector to c:\boot.ini. I guess this would work but I'd prefer Lilo to start first -- I just enjoy Microsoft coming second! :-)) Having LILO as the MBR requires having BOTH the Linux kernel _and_ the Windows XP kernel _below_ the 1024 cylinder on the harddisk. My partitioning (see below) achieves this. I tried it both ways, both with the C:\boot.ini thing _and_ with LILO in the MBR. Turned out LILO MBR worked but that booting Linux from C:\boot.ini didn't, for me. _______ Kind of surprising considering all the previous struggle I had had getting LILO in the MBR to boot XP. All I know is I recognised a lot of the struggles people have been writing about, and suddenly they were gone and things just worked again as it always have in the past with MSDOS 6.2 / Win 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, NT, Windows 2000 and now Windows XP. I have done my dual boot strategy with them all, and it is a sound -- if tedious -- technuiqe. Nowadays I try to force the hardware supplier to place the OS at cylinders 2 to 1023, counting from 0 -- or if he counts from 1, at cylinders 3 to 1024. That way, even if I have to reorder the partition numbering in the partition table in the MBR manually -- which I have written a little shell script using dd for -- I can always either from Linux or from XP's rescue system fix c:\boot.ini afterwards AS LONG AS I DO IT BEFORE ACTIVATING THE OS FOR THE FIRST TIME .. i.e. before ever running it. Then I run a Linux rescue CD with a script of mine to set up partitions and filesystems. This is my general layout: Disk /dev/hda: 9729 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0 Dev__Boot_Start__End_#cyls__#blocks___Id__System______Mountpoint hda1_________0+____1____2-____16033+__83__Linux_______/boot hda2___*_____2+_1023_1022-__8209183+___b__Win95_FAT32_/C__[C:] hda3______1024__2047_1024___8225280____b__Win95_FAT32_/G__[G:] hda4______2048__9728_7681__61697632+___f__Win95_Ext'd_(LBA) hda5______2048+_3071_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/images hda6______3072+_4095_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/cdmaster hda7______4096+_4195__100-___803218+__82__Linux_swap hda8______4196+_4261___66-___530113+__83__Linux_______/ hda9______4262+_5285_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/usr hda10_____5286+_5417__132-__1060258+__83__Linux_______/var hda11_____5418+_6441_1024-__8225248+__83__Linux_______/opt hda12_____6442+_7337__896-__7197088+__83__Linux_______/home hda13_____7338+_7475__138-__1108453+__83__Linux_______/tmp hda14_____7476+_9728_2253-_18097191____b__Win95_FAT32_/F__[F:] (The "-" and "+" means subtract or add 512 byte from the cylinder boundary -- in the space beween there are partition tables, boot records and stuff. I use sfdisk to see all this info. And for all my formatting.) Anyway, this is my working lilo.conf: #boot = /dev/fd0 boot = /dev/hda vga = 771 read-only menu-scheme = Wg:kw:Wg:Wg lba32 prompt #timeout = 80 timeout = 300 message = /boot/message default = XP image = /boot/vmlinuz append = "disableapic hdc=scsi hdd=scsi" label = linux root = /dev/hda8 initrd = /boot/initrd image = /boot/vmlinuz.suse append = "disableapic hdc=scsi hdd=scsi" label = suse root = /dev/hda8 initrd = /boot/initrd.suse optional image = /boot/memtest.bin label = memtest86 #image = /boot/ORIGINALMBR other = /dev/hda2 change automatic optional label = XP table = /dev/hda loader = /boot/chain.b Take care, Leif_Erlingsson______________+46-70-447-8271_____+46-8-778-5038 Katrinebergsvagen_70 146_50__Tullinge,__Sweden____leif@lege.com_______http://lege.com ech`echo unli|tr il oc|sed 'su\([su]\)\([on]\)uo li\2\1x is u'`ol