I have just installed Mandrake 9.2 onto a new HDD installed in my Dell PC.

Originally the Dell had a 80Gig Windows XP drive. I have now installed Linux onto a second 40gig HDD. The installation went ok and the LILO boot loader was installed to the XP drive to allow me to boot XP or Linux. When the installation completed I removed the installation CDs and went for reboot. The PC rebooted but all I got was a screen full of 7's (maybe 07).

Removing the windows drive I can boot into Linux, so it looks like the lilo boot loader is causing the error.

One thing I am wondering is the Dell seems to have a hidden partition and not sure if the boot loader has overwritten part of this. I now cannot boot into Windows.


How would I fix this ?

Thanks

Did you install lilo to the MBR of the
first HDD?

Cheers,
Tink

Also you said you can boot into mandrake once you removed the winxp drive, unless the mandrake installer installs lilo into both the mbr of the first and second disk, which I don't think it does(as far as I'm aware of), you shouldn't be able to boot.
First make a linux boot disk, then boot with a dos bootdisk and do a fdisk /mbr, then try to boot from your xp drive and see if that does anything.

Which drive has XP and which Mandrake.

Boot off Mandrake cd#1 and boot into rescue mode. Copy and post your lilo.conf file.

The PC in question was my works pc, so I've only just got back to play with it.

Turning on with the Windows (Drive 1) disconnected it definitely booted straight into Mandrake. I reconnected the Windows Drive and surprisingly the boot menu did appear I can now connect to either Windows XP or to Mandrake.

Not sure why I am no longer getting the boot failure, as I haven't fixed anything. The failure occured which was why I disconnect the HDD. I had tried it several times last night and couldn't get it to boot, but this morning its worked first time.

Thanks for the help.