Sir I have recently upgraded to Win XP from my original Win 2000 Pro NT. I also had dual partition with Mandriva LINUX 9.2 in it. It was working fine. But when i reinstalled WIN XP the LILO which used to crop up allowing me to multi Boot with either windows or linux suddenly disappeared. More over i am not able to see the other disk partition in My Computer in XP. Earlier in Win 200 PRO NT i was able to see the partition. What happened to my Linux Partition ? How to access it ? What about the LILO ? Thanks for the info Jagannathan Balaji

Have you still got the boot floppy you made during installation? You did make and test one, yeah?!? OK, if you've lost it (or didn't make one) you can still fix it. I haven't used Mandiva since it used to be known as Mandrake, but if it is still the same you can choose to "boot/rescue pre-installed system" or something like that when booting off the first installation CD. This should search through your partitions and allow you to boot your system. Once in run the command "lilo" as root to write your old bootloader back to the MBR. Then make a boot floppy with "mkbootfloppy" for future use....

hello mridhangam I too have xp and linux in the same machine and when reinstalling xp new it will reformat the whole disk therefore erasing everything there. I would always have xp first then I would install linux since with the linux installation you CAN resize/modify/keep/etc existing partitions and existing operating systems. Maybe I'm doing it wrong and if so it would be really nice not to lose linux each time you reinstall xp new. I guess now I'm asking for advice for the 2 of us lol

mycomputerhatesme: I will take a guess you have a XP restore cd not a MS cd ? If it is a restore cd , mybe make the lunix partition type non FAT32 if it is. It is very possibe no matter what the restore cd will wipe the hdd. IF it is a MS cd , it will only delete and remake partitions if you tell to.

Hiya.. i am yet another person that has the same config... I have a program called Xfdisk (Extended Partition manager) which can hide/unhide partitions from each other (EVEN LINUX) and this nifty little proggy (only 84.3 KB!!!) comes with its very own BOOT manager and its BLUE and not RED (such an ugly color on a computer..) the boot manager can be changed just by running Xfdisk itself.. If your interested..Email me at Inventer423@yahoo.com and i will email it back.. This is FREEWARE- I got it free and so can you at this site: short.stop.home.att.net/freesoft/disk2.htm if you dont want me to email it to you.. It will actually save the trouble of emailing me and waiting for a reply .. but i have all the manuals so if you want them , drop me a line. Curiousity only injured the cat. I finished it off.. Muahahaha...

This is precisely where GRUB outshines LILO. In a worse case scenario, you can direct the boot to the appropriate partition from the GRUB> prompt. I never understood the fascination with LILO.

go_places_puterwize: FYI you can change the colours in the boot menu for both lilo and grub if you don't like red. Have a look at bootsplash (http://www.bootsplash.org/) if you want high colour pictures, progress bars, animations etc during startup....