I have widnows XP taking the first 10 GB of the hard drive and now am trying to install linux 8.0 on top of it, using LILO as the boot loader. however, unlike the previous RH linux versions, during the boot loader installation process, I don't see the part where it asks "write LILO into the MBR or to the first part of the hard drive" or something like that. Consequently, LILO apparently doesn't get written to the MBR so when I start the system, it goes right into windows without the LILO screen. but with linux boot disk, i can go into linux. I didn't necessarily create the "/boot" directory during the disk partitoin process. why do you think this might be? thx.

The option to select the MBR is quietly located within a button labeled advanced something or other. Anyway, the bootloader can be fixed. Here are some notes which may help.... 1. Boot your machine from your boot media (cdrom1) and select linux rescue to install to the command prompt. 2. Redhat 8.0 displays a message “If you would like to make your system the root environment, run the command: chroot /mnt/sysimage”. Go ahead and do that. If you are running a different distro or you don’t get that message, you can proceed as follows. · Run mkdir /mnt/sysimage and mount it with mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/sysimage. Note: hda2 is where the linux system is located, yours may be different. · Now run chroot /mnt/sysimage to make your system the root environment. 3. Run rdev /boot/vmlinuz. This should give and output similar to Root Device /dev/hda (the MBR). If this is incorrect, then run the command: rdev /boot/vmlinuz /dev/hda. Note: If you are using a /boot partition, the output may be something like Root Device /dev/hdb1. Also, the file /etc/lilo.config needs to point to the location of your boot partition. In this case, boot=/dev/hda is using the MBR of the first hard drive. Run rdev /boot/vmlinuz again, to check that the root device is correct. 4. Make any changes to /etc/lilo.conf. Note: Large hard drives need to use LBA32 instead of Linier mode. Run the command: lilo . If things work normally, you should see something as follows indicating that lilo has been re-installed... added linux added windows * The asterisk indicates that Windows is the default boot system. Here is an example of my lilo.conf prompt timeout=50 default=Windows boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b message=/boot/message lba32 image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img read-only append=”hdc=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/” other=/dev/hda1 optional label=Windows

Try installing grub instead of lilo. Lilo does not work behind 1000 cylinders. grub does. regards