LILO Woes
 

I have mandrake 9.2 installed as well as windoze XP for gaming, since winxp was preinstalled on the computer, I just chose to install the mandrake bootloader in the MBR. Now, this is the part i'm interested in. If I removed the mandrake partions from windows and installed debian, would I be able to skip the bootloader install part of the debian installation and use the mandrake bootloader? If so, what configuration files would I need to edit?

Why would you want to keep the Mandrake bootloader when you remove Mandrake?

If you overwrite the former Mandrake partitions, booting Debian will fail after installation.
The bootloader (is it still Lilo on Mandrake?) will not find it's second stage nor the Mandrake kernel it is configured for. And you did not tell it where the Debian kernel is either.

Simply let the Debian installer manage this for you, tell it to add all "other" OS to the boot menu when it asks you. This will include the XP system.

Ok, thanks a bunch man. Normally I wouldn't care aboutwhat happened to WinXP but it's not just my computer and other people need to use windows.