These are the lines in your lilo.conf that deal with your XP partition.

other=/dev/hdb2
optional
label=WindowsXP

Are you sure XP is on /dev/hdb2 ? Try this command to see your partitions:

fdisk -l

Thats an L above by the way. This will tell you where you XP partition is. Wherever it says NTFS thats your XP partition. It should be on /dev/hdb2. If its not then thats your problem.

well i let it go for like an hour...it didnt work

[Jason@resnet79-216 /]$ fdisk -l
bash: fdisk: command not found

Oh... It must be a different problem then. Forget about what I said.

DOH!! No fdisk huh? I know there is a command to view partitions in Linux but I'm not sure what it is. Somebody will know. Post it if you know please.

Sorry.. I had to log in as "root".. what a novel idea.

fdisk does work!
-----------------------

[root@resnet79-216 root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 14 267 2040255 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 268 9729 76003515 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 14589 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 4 32098+ de Dell Utility
/dev/hdb2 * 5 14589 117154012+ 7 HPFS/NTFS



its on hdb2 and i changed lilo.conf to boot hdb2 and ran lilo..

now when i select windows XP it flickers and goes back to the choose OS screen..

its pretty gay.
suggestions?

my (still not working) lilo.conf file looks like::

prompt
timeout=50
default=WindowsXP
boot=/dev/hdb2
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14
label=linux.bak
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
read-only
append="hdd=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

other=/dev/hdb2
optional
label=WindowsXP

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-24.8.0
label=linux
append="hdd=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-24.8.0.img

Change the boot back to /dev/hda and make a startup disk just in case you really mess things up.

To get things straight -- you installed WIndows XP on your first hard disk and later Redhat on your second hard disk?

please try the following command and post the output

cfdisk /dev/hdb

(it's supposed to list out all the partitions on your second drive )

do the same for /dev/hda

cfdisk? What is that? No such command on my RedHat machine.

try setting the XP setting in lilo.conf from /dev/hdb2 to just /dev/hdb which is the MBR for the slave drive.

cfdisk doesn't work on my terminal either

I changed lilo to what you said, Darin, and it ended up doing something different yet again

Loading WindowsXP
Error loading Operating System

isn't this frusterating?

forget my earlier post ,
try hdb1 instead of hdb2

theres 2 spots for windows, isnt there?

prompt
timeout=50
default=WindowsXP
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/message
linear

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-14
label=linux.bak
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-14.img
read-only
append="hdd=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"

other=/dev/hdb1
optional
label=WindowsXP

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-24.8.0
label=linux
append="hdd=ide-scsi root=LABEL=/"
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.18-24.8.0.img



do you want me to do anything with the top one?