Perhaps this question is not addressed properly here, but I will give it a try.
I have Windows XP and Linux Slackware partitions, LILO is installed in the MBR.
I have Acronis (on XP) to clone my hd to another disk. It seems that since I installed Lilo in the MBR of my primary HD my second harddisk is not able to boot any more. Even fixing the MBR with the windows XP fixboot results in '01 01 01...' upon boot. Does anyone know how to correct this?

You could try copying the boot sector of the disk that works to the disk that doesn't work. Under Linux, if the disk that works is /dev/hda and the disk that doesn't work is /dev/hdb then the following command would copy the boot sector of the disk that works to the disk that doesn't work.
The disk that was fixed probably needs to be /dev/hda in order for the boot loader to work correctly so you would have to change the cable around before you test the second disk.

I prefer to use Linux to clone disks. Linux give you software tools like partimage, dd, fdisk, and sfdisk that makes it easy to clone partitions, the MBR, and the partition table if you need to do that. If you want to clone disks in Windows I recommend using Symantec Norton Ghost. It's excellent.

I cloned a Slackware only HD to another (2nd) HD of the same size (used Acronis TI).

Anyways this 2nd HD then ran fine (I'd removed the HD # 1)

But it wouldn't boot on its own (I had booted from/using the Slackware install CD then issued appropriate command made it boot fine, ok). As i said it ran fine.

So, while running I then ran /sbin/lilo

Upon reboot, all is fine; it now boots on its own.

I don't know why that was. But, nonetheless, it happened.

--
Alan.

I'd guess that Acronis didn't copy the MBR over. Re-running LILO fixed it.

Cheers.

Thanks, running /sbin/lilo I did this before to install the bootloader in MBR, however, I recall that all the paths were different as this time you need to mount the whole linux disk on a temporary directory when booting from CD. I had to reset several things and don't know exactly how I did it then. Can someone give a few more clues?

Hi,
I discovered this same MBR Lilo error while Acronis cloning slackware hdd's.

The workaround I discovered was that when you are making your HDD image, split it into 650Mb chunks.
I have no idea why this should effect the MBR? But it does.
If you split it, the problem goes away and your system will restore correctly .

N.B. Afterwards, you can burn the 3 or 4 part HDD image onto one DVD to restore off one disc, (it doesnt need to be on separate CD's).

Hope this helps

Cheers

Orbit

System Rescue CD is a good distro to keep around. It has all the tools you need to clone, recover, repair, and reinstall grup & lilo. Good documentation, too!

Dennisk

Hi,

I really think your problem is the 'Acronis'. You could easily use 'dd' to copy/clone a HDD with linux. You could look at Learn The DD Command Revised which is part of 'Slackware-Links' which was compiled from 'Slackware LQ Suggestions Links!' for some good online reference.

The 'dd' reference is rather lengthy but is complete. Read it, very good resource.

Thanks all,
the solution was quite simple (I did it before but forgot how to initially .

Reboot with the Slackware CD, do a
mount /dev/hda7 (where root is) /mnt
My backup HD is IDE, so every 'sda' becomes 'hda'

cp /mnt/sbin/lilo /sbin/lilo and
cp /mnt/etc/lilo.conf /etc
change each reference of 'sda' to 'hda' in lilo.conf
/sbin/lilo
When placing lilo in MBR I have to do this after each hd cloning session