I installed Red Hat 9 earlier, got all the updates & everything was fine. Because I want to try a few Linux based O/S's out I have just installed Mandrake 9.2 on the same hard drive (in its own partition). the installation went well apart from when the computer restarts all I get is the mandrake boot up screen with no mention of Red Hat. I feel quite sure the Red Hat is still there alive & well but how do I get a boot up screen with it on? Thanks, Dave.

Somehow it just doesn't do any harm to have a boot floppy (which you never use until you need it...) www.tldp.org ->howto index -> catagories -> boot the OS -> look for the lilo and grub howto.

My computer starts in LILO and the O/S is Mandrake 9.2. I read the links that Guido kindly gave but I am still unsure. Can I rescue the previous installation of RedHat 9? I see no reason why it won't be there is the drive. I dont mind installing the 2 O/s's from scratch but I'd appreciate a little help with this. Otherwise this will probably happen all over again. If I stick the RedHat 9 disk in then Mandrake might well vanish this time. Please help. thanks, Dave.

Dave, If your first installation put its Boot loader in the MBR and your second installation overrode the MBR with it's own Boot Loader, I don't think you can recover your original Installation. When you install a Linux OS make sure that the Lilo or Grub Boot Loader is on the same partition. Do not put it in the MBR as this can be problematic for one or more of your other OS's. One of the free and excellent Boot Managers is GAG that can be used to load Microsoft Windows, any flavor of Linux, BEOS, etc. It works from the MBR to access the loader that's on the same partition as your OS. Check Out: http://gag.sourceforge.net/