I have windows xp on a laptop and wanted to install linux for dual boot so I down loaded Mandrake 9.2 and used it to partition my hard drive for the setup. It walked you through it step by step. It was really pretty easy. I'm more of an average windows user and linux newbie. I just made sure I read what it was doing and mandrake did most everything for me.

I am little puzzled. If Windows is on hdo, how come rootnoverify must be changed to hd1?

I haven't tried yet since I am away from my machine. Will post result tonight after trying.

Thanks for your continued support.

OK. My bios does not give me the option to choose which hard drive to use. It just says floppy, cdrom, IDE, SCSI etc.

So I am now not sure what to do. I have not yet done the steps given by demonbane. Should I do the grub stuff mentioned and then run ms-sys or do I just run ms-sys w.o the grub root and setup commands?

Right now I do not see a grub.conf file, will that be created by setup or ms-sys?

If you can't specify which drive to boot from in bios then don't worry about my previous post, it won't work.
There's another bootloader on the floppy called "Smart Boot Manager", you might want to try that.
Either way you'll need to install grub into (hd1,0) which is your /boot partition
there should be a grub directory in your /boot otherwise it won't work, if there isnt copy the one on the floppy disk. You need to write your own grub.conf, take a look at the previous examples if you're not sure how to.

backup your current MBR
make sure you copy mbr.bin onto a floppy disk.

Install smart boot manager:
Then reboot, you should see a list of bootable partitions in it, try and see if it's able to load your Windows partition your Linux /boot.

I got sbm to give me a menu. I can choose previous MBR to get to Windows but not the hard drive 1 option.

Linux gives Error loading OS - might be a virus reboot with floppy and update. Update is taking forever, now a1 around 13 hour mark. I though it might be due to some heavy activity on the upgrade servers.

Should I wait or cancel and try something else?

I feel that I am almost there and hence not ready to give up yet.

Either Windows is jeolous or Tux does not like me. I have tried and tried and tried and .... I give up. It burns me to do so but I have not more energy nor will. It has taken too much of my time and it is not fun anymore.

The good news, I am still around to use Linux. I will just have to leave with floppy boot until I convince my one rib to buy a separate machine for Linux and Apache for a personal site.

Thanks for all who have tried to help.

well if you want a site I ran apache/mysql/php in windows along with the OS for quite awhile with no problems truth be told. I'm using slackware as my primary OS now but if that's all you are wanting to do you can do it in windows. Linux won't be fun unless you like learning how to fix things. And sometimes that will mean doing it on your own. Really, the same has been true with windows for me as well but to a lesser extent I suppose.

If you ever change your mind and want to challenge it again, create a small FAT partition on hda and use it as your /boot, that should solve your problem.

By far the eaisiest way to boot linux with winxp is to use the winxp boot loader.
Just install grub to your linux partition, and then boot linux using the boot cd or floppy, then type:
replacing {your-linux-partition} with hd??.
Then move the linux.bin file to your windows partition somehow (floppy disk?), and put it in C:\linux.bin or something.

Then go Start --> Run & type `notepad c:\boot.ini`
and add the line:
C:\linux.bin="Linux"

And voila! Windows becomes linux-friendly. This seems to me the best way to dual boot with xp, without messing with the NT Boot Loader on the MBR. Of course if you have a windows version <= ME, then just go about your business as usual.

I've read the thread, and wondered what went wrong with lilo at a certain moment. I know when installing slackware the auto-install of lilo on the mbr goes wrong (for me most of the time) but when i manually edit the file and then run lilo it does work. I use XP and slack 9.1 where the windowsXP drive is NTFS and to be honoust, i never had any problems..

Maqish

you have to setup lilo properly. auto install of lilo sometimes doesn't work. try using custom configuration of lilo.

custom indeed works, knew that, i wonder if the starter of this thread also tried that..

Maqish

I have tried countless things and nothing seemed to work. I decided not to waste any more time and floppy boot Linux.

Thanks for your inputs.

I tried what aesahaettr suggested with the following results

With GRUB

1. dd if=/dev/hdd ... I get The menu and selecting Linux gives a blank screen with Grub and system freezes
2. dd if=/boot/grub/stage1 ... same thing.

With Lilo

dd if=/dev/hdd ... L with blank screen.

I have also tried to change the boot order in the bios to start with my two ide drives then floppy.

No can do.

In that case, I'd say your system really has some issuse with the linux boot loaders.
just out of curiosity, when it brings up the lilo screen, does it just say 'Li' with no 'Lo'?
If so, then check that the line "lba32" is in /etc/lilo.conf up the top somewhere, and re-run /sbin/lilo
Otherwise give up, use a floppy, or use nero to turn the bootable floppy into a bootable cd... that might be more convienient.