Peep Posted September 14, 2003 Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 There are a lot of lilo threads and dual-booting threads, but I'm not really sure what to do... so I'm asking before I royally botch everything. I reinstalled 9.1 a few months ago, but never bothered to try to boot into winxp until today. If i pick windows from lilo, it just goes to a black screen and the hard drive churns forever. I can see the windows partition from within mandrake, so i know it's still there. It looks like lilo is in the hda mbr. should i have put it elsewhere, and does the windows bootloader need to be in the mbr? or what can i do to make windows bootable again? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 14, 2003 Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 I dual boot xp and usually two other linux distros. What I have noticed is if xp was dual booting before linux, there may be xp boot loader issues. I loaded xp first, after I set up the partitions, and then I loaded mandrake with lilo. It resides on the mbr of hda, and there are no problems. If I ever service windex, I remove lilo first. I have had widex try to "repair" the drive if I don't do that. What does your lilo windex section look like? Her's mine: other=/dev/hda1 label="windows_xp" table=/dev/hda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted September 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 What does your lilo windex section look like? other=/dev/hda1 label="windows" table=/dev/hda so if i remove lilo, i can just get it right back by booting from the mandrake cd, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 14, 2003 Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 Yes. Use the "rescue" mode on cd 1. Boot with the cd, hit esc, type "rescue" and look at the menu. The choices are for removing or reinstalling lilo/grbb, and repairing the windows mbr. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted September 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 hmm, i removed lilo, repaired the windows mbr and it still didn't work :( i reinstalled lilo and mandrake is fine. maybe this will convince me to get rid of windows completely, although i like having it on there so i can format "important" things in word and make sure they look fine (ie, resumes, etc). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 14, 2003 Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 Try this: After uninstalling lilo, use the windex disk to repair the windex boot loader. Then put lilo back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted September 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 ok, i uninstalled lilo (lilo -U /dev/hda), used the windows cd to repair the mbr (with both fixboot and fixmbr), and still can't get windows to load. ALTHOUGH: i just picked windows from the lilo menu and let it sit there... after quite a while, it starts trying to load windows and eventually lets me pick safe mode/etc, but ends up rebooting after a while. so it's getting to windows, just not loading completely. i also get the little stripe at the bottom that windows shows when you're returning from suspend, but it usually takes about 5 seconds to load up... now after about 10 minutes it only gets about 1 inch of the bar. weird. maybe this is a question for a windows forum somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 14, 2003 Report Share Posted September 14, 2003 Maybe. Usually, the easiest route for windex is to reinstall it. But, it sounds like windex is the problem, and not mandrake! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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