GaryCat Posted February 18, 2004 Report Share Posted February 18, 2004 (edited) Hi. I have a 40Gb primary disk containing WindowsXP and a 120Gb secondary containing an 80Gb NTFS partition and a 40Gb Linux partition (hdb5/6/7) into which I installed Mandrake. During installation LILO was written automatically to the primary disk overwriting the Windows XP boot but when I boot it, it just shows "L" and hangs. I have recovered the WinXP boot using fixmbr but I would like to be able to install the bootloader on hdb5 and use the WinXP boot menu but I can't do this as the mandrake installer doesn't give me the option to put it anywhere else or create a boot floppy. Is there some way to force the installer to give me a choice of where to put the bootloader? Any help much appreciated. Gary Edited February 18, 2004 by GaryCat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 You can easily edit the file /etc/lilo.conf and then type lilo at the prompt to process the changes. Just make the mbr on hda, it will work.. There is a faq on duel booting on this board go take a look.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 do an expert install. Boot w/ cd1 and at the splash screen press F1, then type expert and press enter. During the install (b4 partitioning) you'll see a dialog that says configuring bootloader. Ignore...it's not really.....it should say configuring fstab, or something. At the last screen called "Summary" you can configure the bootloader. I think that's also where you'll find the floppy option but I'm not sure because I never make, or use them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 I have successfully dual booted (triple & quadruple) with lilo and xp, with no problems. But, I did not allow xp to "see" the whole drive before installing linux, and I think that might have something to do with it. xp posesses everything it sees, and will not cooperate with other os's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 But, I did not allow xp to "see" the whole drive before installing linux how do ya do that? :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 I partitioned the drive prior to installing xp, with just one partition. xp then only used that partition, and left the rest of the drive alone. It just seems like as soon as it sees everything, it somehow tracks all of it, even if you just partition it seperately. So give xp one partition to see, and it's happy! Unfortunately, you have to know this before installing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 I can see that if after reboot you directly install linux but the very first time xp is booted w/ linux partitions present it sees 'something' starts making assumptions. I thought you knew a way to stop this. But that would be a miracle :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 The catch is, I think, that it will manipulate a drive that is available, and once it does, there is no way to mess with it. If it sees stuff after its own setup, you can play without affecting windex. It will just sneer at the "other" partitions! :D If you don't allow it to use all of a drive, you have a chance of salvaging your computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arthur Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 Has anyone here gotten XP running on a slave HD? Dual-boot with Linux I mean? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 arthur: the best way to do that (since windows won't install on a slave drive) is too hookup the slave as master, leaving the the other w/linux on it disconnected. install windows, when done, put the windows drive back as slave, the linux drive back as master, boot into linux, and add the slave drive to lilo as you would a normal windows paritition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arthur Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 I did that...but I think my Windows installation was corrupted due to a power failure...'no ntkernel.sys' or something at boot. I don't need it anymore anyway. B) B) :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 19, 2004 Report Share Posted February 19, 2004 I've done it w/ a 9x but not an nt. I had to use grub with the map switch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaryCat Posted February 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 Hi, I managed to access my Mandrake install using the F1 and "rescue" options and copy the first 512 bytes of /dev/hdb5 on to a floppy from there. I then copied that to the XP partition and called it from the boot.ini. So I now have two options in my XP boot menu but the Linux option just gives me a blank screen with the letter "L" in the top corner. I'm going to try playing about with lilo again tonight to rewrite the bootloader to /dev/hdb5 unless anyone else has a better suggestion? Cheers Gary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 In order for lilo to function well, it is best to use the mbr. Have you tried grub? The bootloader needs to be in the mbr. xp's bootloader is no doubt functionless; I'd never even think about using it. Try grub on the mbr. Remember, if xp pukes, you can always restore the mbr and get it back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GaryCat Posted February 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 I've never used grub, is there a HOWTO for it? I tried lilo using the rescue boot i.e. # lilo -C /mnt/etc/lilo.conf but got the error message "part_nowrite: read:: Input/output error" I wonder if my bios is having a problem with the 120Gb drive, its a ECS K7S5A with a 06/06/2002 bios. I'll check out grub... and then I'll download RedHat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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