in hda now

thrix, you have your Win XP in hda and the boot loader also in hda...

So, obviously if the entries in the boot loader is not correct you can't boot into Xp. Also, since your linux is in hdc, you can't boot to it also because of bad boot entries (If the problem is a bad boot entry.)

A simple way to make you hda bootable again --> Use your win boot disk and start the system. Then type 'fdisk/mbr'. This will clean the MBR and make it bootable from XP.

However to boot into linux, you have to find which entry in lilo is bad and then correct it. For that we need the error messages that lilo outputs.

UltimaGuy,

Im sorry, you didn't understand, my bad explanation to the problem. Here's the whole story again:

I installed on hdc RedHat 9.0, but at the boot, the boot process freezed. it just writes out (using Grub)

Grub 0 9 0 9 ..... and some other numbers and then freezes.
Using Lilo its almost the same.

When this happened to me for the first time i tried to format (fdisk + format to FAT32), but it didn't help. So i tried low level format and it worked for DOS. But when i installed linux again it became the same. So with my installed system on hdc i used to boot with a floppy, but the slowness of a this kind of booting made me sick. So i reinstalled my linux and put the lilo to hda, where i had winxp and there it boots just fine. So i use now the lilo as the bootmanager to get to both, to linux & winxp too. So now i can get to both.

Could you tell me how to install now lilo to hdc (it's on hda now) and i will try it to boot from it again. If it won't work, i will send you the lilo info (oh how to get it exactly??)
Thanx

Then I think it is a problem with the MBR of the hdc. And why do you need to install lilo in hdc again if the current set-up is working correctly?

PS : The lilo info is in the /etc/lilo.conf file

Hmm, interesting again listen:

I did yesterday low level format and installed Mandrake 9.2 with lilo and it worked!!!!! i was again able to boot from hdc. But then i installed back my RedHat with grub and the problem became the same. I try to reinstall lilo, i'll see what will happen. Do i have to uninstall grub and then install lilo, or i can just simply install lilo on grub?

I think you can just install lilo over grub.

Ok, i tried it, but lilo writes out some kin of error (something about cylinder size). When i try to install grub

grub-install /dev/hdc1

it writes out
Line xxx: cmp: command not found

what does this mean. I tried to search for program named cmp, but i didn't find it anywhere. Any idea?