I installed Mandrake 9.1 as a dual boot with Windows XP's bootloader. After the install everything worked fine, but it kept Linux as the default boot so I changed it to Windows. Now at each start up it just says lilo is booting into Windows and goes straight for XP's boot loader not even giving me the option to either boot into Linux or Windows like it did before when Linux was the default boot OS. I need to get back into Linux and I can't figure out how...I tried a rescue from the cd but it still didn't fix the problem. Lilo is still working fine, it just won't give me an option to choose the boot up OS anymore. Any clue anyone...?

boot from the mandrake installer CD. press F1 for more options and then type
rescue
and then go to a console and edit /etc/lilo.conf. It's probably set to not wait at all for your choice. Look for the line
timeout=
and set it to some reasonable value (it's in 0.1 secs, so 100 is 10sec).
run lilo after this. This should fix it.

What do you mean by "run lilo"....just reboot the computer. I edited the lilo.conf and set the default back to linux and it still doesn't boot into linux....so what do I have to do after editing Lilo's configuration file....

What quatsch means by "run lilo" is that you need to... run lilo. lilo is a program, and in order for it to recognize a new kernel (or OS), you need to rerun it after you edit the lilo.conf file. If you don't, then lilo will keep using its previous settings (as you have discovered)

Just run this command at the prompt: /sbin/lilo

-- J.W.

sorry. there is lilo the bootloader and lilo the program which installs lilo the bootloader. what I meant was, as J.W. says, that you need to run lilo the installer.