Ok, redhat 8.0 boots into LILO and all I get is the "LI" in LILO. then the screen just keeps scrolling the letters "LI" intil I ctrl+alt+del to restart and boot from floppy....I tried the LILO command from the prompt and it still hangs...any suggestion on how to reinstall LILO again in the first boot sector? thanks

from the lilo readme: Problem: When I boot, all I get is 'LI' ======================================= This means the first-stage loader gained control; it thought it success- fully loaded the second-stage loader; but it never got there. This most often occurs when the second-stage loader, '/boot/boot.b', is not load- able using the BIOS. First, have you tried specifying 'lba32' in your 'lilo.conf' file? On newer systems, this will almost always work, since the loader will now use the newer EDD packet calls, which are not cylinder-limited. Second, do you know your disk geometry? This means, do you know the numbers of cylinders/heads/sectors of all your hard drives; and are these the numbers that LILO is using when it installs the boot loader. Three reports of the disk geometry may be obtained: 1. Run 'lilo -t -v5' and check the geometry reports for each device. 2. Run 'lilo -Tgeom' and see if the same numbers are reported. (This may fail on some systems, where LILO has trouble running BIOS calls in v86 mode.) 3. Create the diagnostic floppy (see README.disk) and check the reported disk geometries. If any of the geometry reports differ, then you may have to specify the disk geometry to LILO using 'disk= heads= sectors='. Use the actual numbers reported by the BIOS: #3 above, or #2. The reports above will also indicate the BIOS device codes used by each disk. LILO uses heuristics to obtain these device codes, and usually gets the codes right on all-IDE or all-SCSI systems. However, systems with multiple IDE controllers, mixed IDE/SCSI systems, and SCSI systems on Future Domain controllers, will require you to tell LILO what disks are assigned to what device codes. This can be done using 'disk= bios=' lines in 'lilo.conf'. RTFM hth, armin

Try (after backing up your original!=o) editing your /etc/lilo.conf to a bare minimum (you may wish to create one from scratch) and writing that to the MBR. If you still have problems, post up your lilo.conf

thanks guys....I made the backup of lilo.conf already when I tried to tinker with it last night, but it still hung a "LI". I'll try what Armin suggests when I get home in a couple of hours and post my lilo.conf file also if it doesnt work...thanks for the suggestions guys...

STILL NO LUCK! AGH! Keep in mind, I have a dual boot redhat 8.0 and windows XP, and have lilo installed in the first sector... Here's my lilo.conf file: prompt timeout=50 default=Redhat boot=/dev/hda2 map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b message=/boot/message lba32 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 label=Redhat initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img read-only append="hdd=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/" other=/dev/hda1 optional label=WindowsXP When I run "LILO" from the shell, it says Added Redhat* Added Windows XP Everything seems fine but it still hangs at "LI"....Any other suggestion??? Thanks for any more help...

it is because you installed lilo on to the partition. you must install a boot loader to the mbr. if you can not find any boot loader for you reinstall redhat and choose hd0 or MBR in lilo installer. or if you wish you can use windows XP cd in recovery mode. but you will need to reinstall redhat. insert xp cd. make cd rom to boot first. after cd loads press r(recovery) login windows (command prompt) in command prompt write; fixmbr this will make it allright i did it a feww times and my partitions were ok but still it can harm your computer as everything about mbr