Newbie Lilo problems

I have two HD's, 13gb with Mandrake 9.2, 40gb with Win98, and LILO installed to give me a choice on boot. These have worked fine for the last 2 years, (but I'm still a Linux newbie because I installed Mandrake and never used it!). Anyway, I've just discovered the Win98 disk will not boot if I disconnect the Linux disk - it just fills the screen with garbage. Also the Linux disk will not boot on its own - it brings up the menu options Linux, Linux non fb, floppy etc, but just hangs when I select Linux.

Problem is I'm just about to upgrade to Mandrake 10x and have read it's better to format the disk and do a clean install than upgrade, but obviously worry I won't be able to boot the Win98 disk if I make any changes. I reckon the LILO install didn't go properly as it brings up an option for booting 'Old Linux'.

Questions are -
1. Is LILO really that fussy about any changes to the set up of the disks? Surely I should be able to boot both disk independently?

2. Does it sound like something has gone seriously wrong with the MBR? Am I going to have to format both disks and re-install both operating systems? If so will that MBR problem be corrected by doing a format /s on both disks before re-installing the operating systems?

3. I've also been unable to create a Linux boot floppy, so only have the installation floppy. I go through the steps to create, and have done mkinitrd which says the inintrd file is already built. The floppy contains an initrd file, but the boot process it can't find the initrd. Am I not getting a usable boot floppy because of problems with LILO?


Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
mattnotfat

1-If lilo was installed in your Linux partition, then your issue is normal.
2-Try Slackware.