Hi, Ok I've searched in google, on this forum other forums I've read all I can find and even asked a few people. This I can't seem to fix.

I was running winXP everything was fine, then I decided to install MDK 9.2 During the installation it asked me where to write the bootloader to (LILO) I picked (MBR Master Boot Record) Which was my mistake I should have never had done that. So now I couldn't get into windows at all, I tried looking at the lilo conf everything was fine. I just couldn't get into windows. So after trying to reinstall lilo upgrading to 10, doing fdisk /mbr going into windows recovery console and doing fixmbr etc I even formated the entire drive used fdisk to fix it cleared everything and thought I will start from the bottom, when I did all this and tried to install XP again it gives me the errory "missing operating system" I tried everything and it always gives me that msg the only thing I can do is install Mandrake and when done that LILO gets written to the MBR and again I can't run windows. Someone please help.

Can you run the command:sfdisk -l /dev/hda and post the results.

sounds like a fat load of overkill.
did you edit your lilo.conf and add winndows to the boot option ?

im no expert on lilo...
but i like grub, boots windows fine.

it said command not found ...What I found most weird was that it said omx@localhost omx in which on my old MDK 10 before formatting and reinstalling it was named omx@omx hmm

Tried edding the conf file for lilo even tried grub

then try cfdisk... an alternative to sfdisk.

Disk /dev/hda: 119150 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 516096 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 405 406- 204592+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda2 406 119148 118743 59846472 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hda5 406+ 53613 53208- 26816800+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 53614+ 119148 65535- 33029608+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

That would appear to be the famous lba bug with kernel 2.6.? .

Check around for a fix which you are comfy with such as this one.here

Homey: This can't be, MDK 9.2 ships with 2.4.22...

I think I know how to solve your problem, something similar happened to me a while back.
All I needed to do was a: 'fixboot' in the WinXP recovery console.

Explanation: Misconfigured Lilo may have used the beggining of the XP partition(boot sector), this'll put 'ntldr' and all needed conf files back.
In grub(which I used when I had the problem), faulty commands like "setup (hd0,0)" overwrites the bootsector.

I hope this helps.

I got mdk 10 so yeah I got kernel 2.6

Didn't you say you installed mandrake 9.2?
Make informations clear, then we'll be able to help you as effectively as possible.

Edit: Oh I see:
Guess I didn't understand that part, please try to say things in a more comprehensible manner.
Also, try to make the text clearer by putting empty lines: ordering the text, text like yours are difficult to read
Thanks...

Keep cool.

Ok Sorry about that.

Well Everything I have tried including suggestions from this forum don't seem to be working.

Well last night I formated everything made that harddrive one partition.
Cleared MBR tried fdisk /mbr even went into XP recovery console and did map ..then bootfix and even fixmbr

I tried everything I could and everytime I started to install windows when the PC would boot up I get "Missing Operating System" when I place a boodisk in and boot from there I can't see that harddrive. although in FDISK I can as well as XP install.

For Mandrake I can install 9.2 and 10 with no problems I just load up the boot CD and install.

Its weird I just can't fiqure it out for some reason it won't notice my NTFS or FAT file systems on that specific harddrive and MBR won't read windows.

Although Linux works fine, all this has become a problem since LILO was written to the Master Boot Record.

Well since you have tried everything else with no success, there should be no harm in trying this method.
Remember at first when I asked you to use sfdisk to get the information? That's because the fix I found uses sfdisk and I don't know for sure if fdisk would take the exact same command.

If you noticed the part which I highlighted......16 heads well that most likely needs to be 255 heads.

Since you said the sfdisk command was not found on your system, maybe you could boot up with a live cd of some sort like system rescue or similar.

When booted up with something which will let you use sfdisk, run the command:
sfdisk -l /dev/hda
The top line of output is the part to look at. For example, my 80gig drive looks like this...
Disk /dev/hda: 9729 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track

The fix which I saw on the web uses the command:
After you do that, check your results with sfdisk -l /dev/hda

Ok Thank you once I get off here I will go home and give it a try and post back results

/me crosses fingers

This is quite weird, 'sfdisk -l /dev/hda' gives me:
Yet, I can access WinXP with no problem.
My HD is also of 80gig.
Seems like someone is lucky!

Hope you know the old rule..... If it ain't broke, don't fix it.