Hi so I'm brand new to Linux and I want to set up LILO. I want to get LILO down before I try to use grub just for educational purposes. So I set up my partitions like this:

sda1: 1gb for boot
sda2: ~150gb for windows 7
sda3: ~150gb for slackware 13.37
sda4: 2gb for swap

Windows is installed first and works fine, then I installed slackware. When it comes to LILO on the setup, I try putting it into the MBR and it seems to be ok. But when I restart it always boots up into windows and never shows LILO. I guess my question is how can I use my boot partition since I installed LILO to the MBR? I think that's the reason it won't work. I formatted sda1 with ext2 because I heard that works better than ext4 which has trouble sometimes, is this true?

First of all, there's no real need for a separate /boot partition. Second, if you do want a /boot partition, 1 GB is far too big. Only thing I can suggest is re-installation of 7, then Slackware with just 2 partitions: / and swap, with lilo on the MBR.

If you have setup everything correctly, you need to make changes to lilo.conf files to choose default loader ( windows or Linux ) and timeout value should be higher so that you can see the lilo when you boot PC. Your boot partitions should be enough with 100 MB of disk space.