I've just installed SuSE 8.0 on my machine. The machine has two harddrives (40mg-primary, 8.4mg-slave). Windows 98 is on hda1 thru 8). SuSE install properly installed Linux on hdb6 (swap) and hdb7 (Linux-reiser) on the slave drive. The install never asked how or where to install Lilo, but I assume it put it in the MBR of the slave drive. Again, no problem since the MBR on the primarr drive was untouched so I can still boot Win98. I created a Linux boot disk from within the Suse YAST in Linux. I also copied loadlin.exe and vmlinuz (my kernal) to the C: partition in windows so that I can dual boot from the DOS autoexec.bat. Now I figure I have 2 ways to boot Linux ... but neither work.

When I boot with the boot disk and select "Boot Installed OS", Win98 boots and not Linux. How do I get the boot disk to boot from the slave-hd MBR and not the primary-hd MBR?

When I boot from DOS and select to boot Linux (as described in "The Loadlin+Win95/98/ME mini-HOWTO" by Chris Fischer), the loadlin process starts ok, but then aborts and starts the reboot cycle. The command being executed is:

c:\loadlin c:\vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb7 ro

and the resulting message in DOS is:

"Loadlin ........................ (etc.) "

I've double-checked that loadlin and vmlinuz were copied properly to c: and that hdb7 is where linux is installed. What could be causing Loadlin to kick out without successfully booting Linux?

The only way to successfully boot Linux is to boot from the install CD and begin the installation. When the installation choice option comes up (New Installation, Update Installation or Boot Installed System) I select the boot option and from there Linux booting occurs successfully.

Any suggestions?

have you added the smartdrv option
ie smartdrv /c