mandrake 9.1 boot fix

Here it is folks, I have found a way to boot mdk9.1 with winXP.
A little history 1st. After reading a lot of posts about dual booting, and seeing all the problems that I also was having, I thought some of you might want to hear about a solution.
I have tried to dual boot Win XP with various distros of Linux, and had differing results. Some would work, others would not. So I downloaded mdk 9.1rc2, since I already was using beta3, I thought, no big deal, just upgrade...... Not. Mandrake 9.1 beta3 or rc2, both would install LILO into the MBR of my first bootable drive; ie: win XP. Thus would overwrite the boot loader for windows. During the install, it gives me no choice where to put LILO, as well as no option not to put it anywhere. After the install, at the summary screen I would choose a boot disk on floppy. when I reboot at the end of install I would get an error L 99 99 99 99..... etc. and nothing would boot, mdk or windows. Tried reinstalling, system, boot loader, LILO, nothing worked.
So here is how I fixed it.
things required, blank floppy disk, and copy of win9.x start-up disk.
1st. install or reinstall WinXP.
2nd. install mandrake9.1, use advanced mode.
3rd. at summary at end of install. configure boot loader,
select grub, it will already say you have selected the graphic boot loader and this is OK, ignore it. select boot device as /dev/fd0 (floppy) click on the check box to create a boot disk, then click OK, make the disk and leave it in the drive, at summary page click "next" and finish the install, it will pop up a screen where you can set your default OS or add or modify your boot list, make sure it points to your windows install as well.
4th. remove all media and put in the win start-up disk, reboot
run "fdisk/mbr" this erases the LILO that you had no option not to install, and restores your windows boot loader.
remove the disk and reboot. windows should start normally
if it does you did this much right,
put in the grub boot disk you created, reboot, when it starts you will have a graphic screen with all your OS's listed, and 10 seconds to make a choice or it will boot your set default.
good luck. it works for me.

u say u use mandrake? i need to know which linux tu get next, i tried only suse, and red-hat which i don't like that much , it was the 7.2 version but anyways just gimme an ideea to which u think is better thanks

I'm using Mandrake 9.1 on a few different machines - All dual-booting with WinXP Pro by means of Lilo... no problems on any of them. Some people have trouble some don't ... Glad you found a way to get your system usable

The command with a windows boot disk is fdisk /mbr, note the space.