I guess I'll try the lilo -u cause I can't get anything to boot straight to windows. I have a compaq machine and it came with a emergency boot diskette and cd as well as a set of cd's that will ostensibly restore the machine back to the config with which it was delivered. NONE of them will boot...just like the partition magic diskettes. Someone mentioned that I might have a boot partition corruption...well that doesn't sound too good and more importantly how do I determine if I do and if I do what can I do about it?

No change. I had a friend build a dos boot diskette, which didn't work. I got my hands on the latest version of partition magic, it won't boot either, the boot process fails exactly like the previous version of partition magic.

The diskette (dos or PM) loads and starts the process but very soon after accessing the hard drive the whole process freezes.

I guess I'll give lilo -u a try.

Thanks everyone.

Have you checked to see if windows is still there by mounting it through linux?

If all else fails try:

Create a boot disk for lilo and grab your windows boot floppy:

1.Place your windows boot floppy in and boot to it.
2.At the prompt type 'fdisk /mbr '
3.Remove the floppy and reboot. (it should boot straight into windows.)

If not

1.Place the Windows Boot floppy back in and boot to it
2.Copy the system files back to the hard disk. (I can't rmember the commad for it sorry) but that will retore the syteem files and hopefully it will boot.

If all goes well, then its just a matter of using you Linux boot floppy to boot to linux and reinstall lilo.

Is your computer overclocked i had problems with bootdisks when my computer was overclocked but they work fine when it isnt dunno why but they do.

my windows boot diskette won't work, the machine freezes up, the only diskette that does work is the Linux boot diskette. Even Partiion Magic 6 won't boot.

I can't get to a dos prompt to do a fdisk /mbr.

I can't say that I can help you but have you checked that windows still exists through linux?

If so try copying these file to your windows boot disk by accessing them from linux (I don't know if it will work on boot) also make sure that the boot floopy is for the windows file system, fat, ntfs etc

aspi2.dos.sys aspi4dos.sys aspi8dos.sys aspi8u2.sys aspicd.sys autoexec.bat btcdrom.sys btdosm.sys command.com config.sys drvspace.bin ebd.cab ebd.sys extract.exe fdisk.exe findramd.exe flashpt.sys himem.sys io.sys msdos.sys oakcdrom.sys ramdrive.sys readme.txt setramd.bat

The files above are the files contained in my Win98 boot disk.

if you get to boot do the fdisk and system files processes mentioned in other posts.

also did you try the lilo -u command?

yes i tried lilo -u now when i boot I get a LI and then the processes stops. I will try the files if I can figure it out. Thanks for the suggestions.