it sounds like the kernel is not configured correctly

if you can turn of plug and play in your bios try that, also you could disable things you don't need to boot and unplug any externasl hardware and see if it helps

still nothing, i'll try a reinstall this weekend and see if that helps, if not i may just put linux back on my old, slow box.

If i remove linux can i remove LILO? If so, how?

Tim-

uninstall lilo first

lilo -u

Yay, I got it to work!!!

I'm so happy

I went into my BIOS and turned of legacy USB support and swithed to a ps/2 keyboard instead of a USB keyboard.

Now I can finaly start playing with linux.

Thanks for all your help David.

Tim-

cool,

Now if you get comfortable with it, you could probably recompile the kernel and fix the usb problem.

I'm adding this post because I searched for the error message "Window could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt" and I came across this thread which looked promising but failed to answer the question (although if you don't mind changing your Master Boot Record then the I would recommend following the other posts in this thread and ignoring this post). I couldn't find any other page that came as close as this to the problem so I figured this was a pretty good place to post my solution. Apologies that it doesn't relate to the progression of the actual thread but it does match exactly with the original post which is what people will search for.

If like me you want a dual boot XP and RedHat with XP as the primary os and you get the above error then you may have made the same mistake I did - you haven't set up RedHat properly. During the installation there is a screen for the boot loader and if you're just testing Linux then you will probably have done as I did and clicked the configure button and switched off the boot loader, choosing instead to boot from the boot floppy that you create later in the installation. There can't be many people that would want to mess with their Master Boot Record with no previous experience with the software they are installing.

OK, so now you've discovered that RedHat really is as reliable as they say it is and you want to boot a bit quicker than the boot floppy method so you do a bit of searching and find that if you call up a Terminal window in RedHat and type "su<return>", enter the password, then type "dd if=/dev/hdxy of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1" (where x is the drive letter and y is the partition number of your linux boot partition - if you're not sure what this is then type "df -h" at the prompt and look for the word boot - mine was hda7) then you end up with a boot file that you can copy to your XP c:\ drive. You can then add the line "c:\bootsect.lnx = "RedHat 9"" to the end of your C:\boot.ini file in XP and you're all done. Except that you're not because when you reboot and select RedHat 9 from the boot list you get the above error!!!

The problem is that you MUST install Grub or Lilo when you install RedHat. The trick is that you don't HAVE to install it on your Master Boot Record (and interfere with the XP boot loader). On the RedHat 9 installation screen where you have to choose your boot loader, leave it on Grub (or change it Lilo if you like) but check the bottom checkbox relating to customising an advanced installation of the boot loader. Then on the very next screen you can untick the boot loader location of "MBR (Master Boot Record)" and tick the location of "/Boot" which is your RedHat boot partition which is nothing to do with your XP partition. Now when you use the DD command you will get a correct boot image and once copied to c:\ drive on XP (and added to your c:\boot.ini file) then choosing RedHat9 from the XP boot screen will actually boot Linux rather than generating the error.

Hope that is of use to someone.