Hey, I used to use gentoox on the xbox all the time and windows on my main pc. Today I figured that installing linux on this pc would be amazingly fast and fun. So I tried installing mandrake. When it was done and after i had configured everything the way i liked, it rebooted my computer. Instead of an OS loading or a list of OS's i got a black screen with L 07 07 07 repeating 1/2 way down the screen. I was afraid to lose my XP drive so i put in the XP cd and redid the MBR. Now everything is back to normal when booting into windows but I have no idea how to get a dual boot with linux. I have 2 hdds now a 80gb for windows and a 10 for linux. I mad 2 partitions on the 10 and put 5 for windows use and like 4.5 for linux and 500mb for swap. Im not sure how to redo the MBR to get them to list correctly and boot.
Thanks, Matt

You should be able to boot with your mandrake cd and reinstall the boot loader program (lilo I think). Try a search on these forums, this is not an uncommon question and I'm sure you'll find a good answer within a few searches, or search the mandrake/mandriva faq's.

I tried putting in the dvd and doing a rescue on the bootloader, but when the computer reboots i get L 07 07 07 down the screen again so i have to put in the dvd again and restore the windows mbr. any ideas :/

Ok well i have no clue what so ever now because when trying just to use the bootloader thats with mandrake to boot i get the screen with L 07 07 07.

If upon reinstalling Lilo to the MBR you are continually getting this problem, it might not be installing to the right sectors of the HD. Not quite sure how to deal with that. However, you might want to do a few forum and google searches and possibly consider booting both OSes with Window's bootloader, NTLDR. Just an idea, this is possible. This will concern editing the boot.ini file in Windows. Here's one link I found in a quick search.

http://www.highlandsun.com/hyc/linuxboot.html

Best of luck to you.

I got it!!! i entered in expert mode and just wrote lilo to a floppy, so now when i want to use mandrake or windows really ill put it in and say if my parents want to use my computer ill tell them to take it out and reboot. Now i have the problem of ALSA not working correctly so i have very very low sound, grr this happened before and i forget how to fix it. Thanks for your help everyone

try this thread; just post at the end of it if it doesn't solve your problem and I will try to help as best I can.

thanks so much!, doing alscaonfg worked wonders