Can't boot XP or RH

webrurouni · 10-12-2003, 05:25 PM

I have had XP for a while and recently installed RH9 on a secondary hd. Now i'm having problems booting w/o the RH9 boot disk. The first HD is NTFS. The second HD isn't setup as bootable. I've installed Lilo to the MBR of the first hd. When I start my comp without the boot disk, I get "l 07 07 07 etc...". the "07"'s repeat until it fills almost half the screen. Can someone help me get XP and RH9 working?

Skyline · 10-12-2003, 06:21 PM

Have you always had to use the boot disk to boot into Linux? - has LILO on the MBR previously enabled you to boot into either of them at all?

webrurouni · 10-12-2003, 08:09 PM

the system wouldn't let me boot either of them, so i had to use the boot disk to boot to RH with windows unbootable

though, just recently i put in the XP pro install cd and cleared the mbr. so now it can boot to XP

so my new problem is, is that to boot to RH, i have to insert a boot disk. i've tried installing LILO onto the MBR but it just boots as XP

so can someone give me a link to a good boot program or help on configuring LILO?

teknomage1 · 10-12-2003, 09:28 PM

Sounds like lilo isn't configured properly, Could you post your lilo.conf file from /etc ?

webrurouni · 10-12-2003, 09:49 PM

that is also part of the problem... the LILO has to be configured on my master HD with windows.. but windows is configured with NTFS (didn't originally plan to install linux). so it is sort of hard to work with LILO and the MBR when it's on HDa with an NTFS filling system...

also i tried installing the LILO through the installation CD, but it had no result, and XP just started up like normal.

do you know any other dual boot starters? temporarily i'm using a boot disk every time i have to start linux.

teknomage1 · 10-13-2003, 06:28 PM

Your MBR is actually a psuedo partition not related to hda1 or anything. It's entirely possible to have lilo on the mbr of a %100 ntfs drive. In fact I did that when my laptop got fried by a power surge that killed the mbr, but luckily left my other dat unharmed. I recommend booting to knoppix and editting a lilo.conf file and execute the command lilo -M to put it in the mbr. Knoppix is a bootable linux cd. Go open source!

webrurouni · 10-13-2003, 08:50 PM

i'm sorta new at linux... could you explain that in more detail?

i'm not sure if i have knoppix... i have RH...

thanks

KevinJ · 10-13-2003, 09:53 PM

Boot to your RH floppy boot disk and post the contents of /etc/lilo.conf

-K

webrurouni · 10-14-2003, 07:51 PM

# LILO configuration created by QuickInst 22 Sun Oct 12 17:53:07 CDT 2003

boot = /dev/hda
prompt # always expect prompt
timeout = 150 # wait 15 seconds
vga = normal # force sane state
lba32 # 'linear' is deprecated
delay = 30 # delay 3 seconds if there is a stored command line
#serial = 0,1200n8 # uncomment to use COM1 too
read-only # initailly mount roots r/o
root = current # use "current" root
image = /boot/vmlinuz
label = linux
other = /dev/hda1
table = /dev/hda
label = dos