I am using windows XP and mandrake 8.1 on a dual boot system with lilo. I upgraded win98 to XP with mandrake alread installed. Everything was going fine. I tried switching my linux hard drive to a differnet computer and was unable to boot winXP. After several attempts I booted winXP, found out I had bad memory in my new system and placed the linux hard drive back. i reinstalled lilo though the rescue function and can get the lilo boot manager screen. When I select linux it boots no problems. When I select windows it prints on a black screen "Loading Windows" and hangs. I can boot windows with a startup disk and fdisk /mbr, but then I can't use linux. i tried several times to make a boot floppy but get the message initrd.image not found.i used several commands to create the boot floppy includdeing "DD" "mkboot..." and "Boot disk" from control center in Mandrake.

Jarin Scott

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=58106

There are a couple of suggestions on what you could do

So can you tell us a bit about your drive setup, and can you post up your /etc/lilo.conf and the results of typing:
fdisk -l (FDISK -L lowercase)
as root.

Cool

I have two hard drives. The frist has one partions which is windows xp and is HDD1.
The second Hard Drive has the linux root on hdb1 with the home drive on hdb2.
I also have two fat32 partions with no OS used for back-up and sharing between linux and windows.

Here's what fdisk -l gave me.

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2434 cylinder
s
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id S
ystem
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 * 1 2434 19551073+ c W
in95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4863 cylinder
s
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id S
ystem
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 * 1 446 3582463+ 83 L
inux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2 447 4863 35479552+ f W
in95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part5 447 477 248976 82 L
inux swap
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part6 2118 3807 13574893+ b W
in95 FAT32
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part7 3808 4863 8482288+ b W
in95 FAT32
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part8 478 2117 13173268+ 83 L
inux

Partition table entries are not in disk order


Here's lilo.conf

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
vga=normal
default=linux
keytable=/boot/us.klt
lba32
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=linux
root=/dev/hdb1
append=" hdd=ide-scsi devfs=mount quiet"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=linux-nonfb
root=/dev/hdb1
append=" hdd=ide-scsi devfs=mount"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=failsafe
root=/dev/hdb1
append=" hdd=ide-scsi devfs=mount failsafe"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label=windows
table=/dev/hda
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
other=/dev/fd0
label=floppy
unsafe

Thanks for the help

Jarin Scott

can you control :
Windows is on hda1 (and not on hdd1 as you said in your message)

I don't know what are the lines in lilo.conf:
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
try to comment then (with a #)

I don't see other problem

Those lines:
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80

are for mapping a win drive to believe it's on hda if you decide to place it on hdb for some reason. So maybe at some point in drive transitions it became necessary to have those lines; however since XP is now on hda you no longer need them and commenting them out should work.

hdd1: I see the confusion. In linux hda and hdd are 2 different drive locations. hdd1 to you means your first hdd, where to a linux user this means the Secondary Slave drive.



HTH

Cool

Sorry for the mistake windows is and always was on hda. I got windows to boot by getting rid of those map lines. everything about lilo is fine now. Thanks for the help.

Jarin Scott