OK, so I messed around with the machine a little... Now, when I brought everything back it's previous conditions (or aberrantly not) when I boot up, it seems that LILO get stuck and prints to the screen only "LI" and than the machine freezes.

Any ideas?

do a rescue boot with your boot CD's and reinstall lilo since it appears you can't boot into any partition...but if you do the CD boot you will be able to boot. Let us know how it goes.

There is no problem booting using the CD in rescue mode. The problem is that it doesn't seem to see any of the HD partitions. so I don't have any access to the system at all through it...

Don't boot into rescue mode or such but try to boot into your normal system using a kernel on the cd (which distri do you use?). That way getting those things to work again is much easier. first try reinstalling lilo and then we'll see ..

Solution:
Ok, I was thinking about all the changes this machine went through and came to conclusion that the boot sector could have not gotten damaged in everything that happened. There for, nothing should have changed with LILO. I decided to take a peek at the hardware and played around with the master/slave settings. Seems like both drives get recognized by the BIOS whenever they are either set to master/slave or "cable select" but linux will boot only when they are set to "cable select". The strange thing is that they were set to cable select to begin with, so nothing actually changes but now it works.

NOW, trying to install Windows XP to the second hard drive simply doesn't work since after the initial format and files copy the installation throws a "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\sustem32\hal.dll". This indicates a problem with Windows loader which the installer probably expects to be in the first drives boot sector (which is occupied by LILO). Any why to go around that?

i the second drive the Slave or master?...Windows will refuse to install onto the slave drive....you might have to swap drives and put Linux as the slave.

The second drive I'm trying to install windows on is the slave drive. Does Windows always have to go only on the master drive? If I do swap drives how would I go about moving the LILO to the first drive boot?

err, okay, you will learn your first lesson now.

Boot loader should always go on your MASTER BOOT RECORD (MRB) not the first partition of the first hardrive....unless you have some very unquire setup, but in general you alway put it in the MBR. this way you can wap hardrives and nothing bad happens to your boot loader.
Second, unless you want to get very extra-technical and want to spend the time figuring it out....when duel booting, Windows should always goes on the first hardrive, partition, disk, etc....in general always first. It likes it that way....and that's it period.

Well, I know THAT.

Question is what is the best way to make the switch?

well if you know 'THAT' why didn't you do it from the beginning?....and all you would have to do is swap the drives and change the /dev/hda to /dev/hdb for Windows and Linux.

But since you installed the loader on the first partition of the hardrive....things are a bit more complicated. You probably have several choices, doing a new Linux install, also I think you might be able to install the boot loader on the MBR without doing a new install...but I'm not sure how. And I'm sure someone else can suggest another alternative.

That's exactly what I want to do...

Anyone?

Any new ideas about that?

Take out the disk with linux on it - just for the time you install windows on the other disk - also: install that disk to be a master - not a slave (in linux-language: put it where it would be /dev/hda or /dev/hdc) - this is to be as sure as possible that it will work, because I dont know if windows will have problems being installed to a slave drive
Later after the install of windows, put everything where you want it to be (I suppose that you want linux on the first master-drive and windows on the first slave drive - correct?)

You already installed a boot loader (LILO) so there is no problem getting it to boot your newly installed Windows.
After you booted up into linux you would add the windows you installed to your /etc/lilo.conf and reinstall lilo ( by issuing "lilo -v" - which will rewrite your mbr to contain the option to boot to windows as well as to linux )

To be sure of how to do it, you could post your current /etc/lilo.conf as well as the layout of your system, as it is supposed to be and as it is now (which partition is where...)

As an example I give you my current lilo.conf
It has an entry at the end - which is commented out - because that setup is no longer valid, but I had a setup working which was just like yours --> linux on the first disk (/dev/hda) and windows on the second (dev/hdb)
...the entry which references Windows-XP is the current one and was then: other=/dev/hdb1


here it is:
Jonathan:~$ cat /etc/lilo.conf

boot=/dev/hda

map=/boot/map-bmp
install=/boot/boot-bmp.b

bitmap=/boot/ins64a.bmp
bmp-colors=14,11,,15,9,0
bmp-table=21,287p,2,4,175p
bmp-timer=73,29,12,8,0

prompt
timeout=50


image=/boot/linux-2.6.7
label=linux-2.6.7
root=/dev/hda2
append="video=aty128fb:1024x768"
read-only


image=/boot/lfskernel
label=linux-2.4.24
root=/dev/hda2
append="video=aty128fb:1024x768"
read-only


other=/dev/hda1
label=Windows-XP

# table=/dev/hdb
# map-drive=0x80
# to=0x81
# map-drive=0x81
# to=0x80

# end /etc/lilo.conf