Psyco26,

Can you add these line to /etc/lilo.conf
Lilo will check the boot sector of hdc1 and hdb1 for a boot loader and clear it for implementation if it finds one. It will then report something like "Windows_in_hdc1 added".

I suspect between hdc1 and hdb1 one of the two partitions is your first boot disk and will have the necessary files to boot NYLDR. The other one may be just a data-only partition and Lilo will regard it as an error when no boot loader is found inside (thereby Lilo can't boot this alternative) and the configuration will not be implemented. Therefore if any of the hdc1 or hdb1 system is reported as error can you put a "#" in front of each line to disable that booting alternative.

If you do not want to go through the liloconfig everytime you can put Lilo in the MBR of either sda, hdb and hdc. Sda does not appear to be the 1st boot disk and my guess would be hdb. Thus I would try the Bash command on all three disk
If Lilo accepts it then it can boot regardless which disk you have arranged with the Bios to boot first.

The Lilo in the MBR can be replaced by MS's MBR as you did before so there is no harm to have Lilo to occupy the MBR of all three disks.

The commmand should compile Lilo's first 512 bytes, include an address to load partition sda3 and place the image in the MBR (first sector of 512 bytes) of the specified disk.

Lastly if you Windows in sda1 relies on NTLDR files in another partition then you must have two MS systems running. The PC boots to the first partition that stores the NTLDR and should show the MS choices available for you to boot. In that circmstance you have no need to boot sda1, just the partition that stores NTLDR.

When I type the lilo -b /dev/hdb or hdc and sda i get :
Ignoring entry 'boot'
Warning: /dev/sda is not on the first disk
Added Slack *
Added Windoze

Same on ALL the disks....

I will try now with the codes :

# Trying to see if Windows NTLDR inside hdc1
other = /dev/hdc1
label = Windows_in_hdc1

# Trying to see if Windows NTLDR inside hdb1
other = /dev/hdb1
label = Windows_in_hdb1

And see what will happen, will keep u posted....

Weird thing still is that i get on LILO that :

root@Pitbull:~# lilo
Warning: /dev/sda is not on the first disk
Added Slack *
Added Windoze

Dident get that before though..... Will keep up posted ....thx again...

Never mind the last now after reboot i get :
root@Pitbull:~# lilo
Added Slack *
Added Windoze
Added Windows_in_hdc1
Added Windows_in_hdb1

Will try to reboot again and chooes windows and see what happens...

ITS SWEET, on boot i get :
Slack
Windoze
windows_in_hdc1
windows_in_hdb1
AND U KNOW WHAT, IT WORKS!!! D. i choose windoze and it boots so its really SWEET, just 1 question its working because we added
# Trying to see if Windows NTLDR inside hdc1
other = /dev/hdc1
label = Windows_in_hdc1

# Trying to see if Windows NTLDR inside hdb1
other = /dev/hdb1
label = Windows_in_hdb1

Well @ least its working so im darn happy, thx again for everyones help and hope pepople reading this will get it to work, because it works for me , THX AGAIN.

Glad you have it sorted in the end.

Sorry if I upset anybody one the way. I was just trying to be lazy by short-circuiting the process to do the minimum work.

The reason it is working is because your Windows NTLDR is NOT on /dev/sda, but on one of the other drives. You could figure that out and we can fix LiLO properly, or go on as you are.

Well Bruce and saikee, you have both been to UBER help, and maybe i will try to play around with that later but why change something that is working, dont mind that i get 2 other drives on boot , thx again will keep you posted if some more errores come up ......

Psyco26

Based on the experience of using Lilo for 37 out of 100+ installed distros in my box I wouldn't say your Lilo has been improperly installed.

There are few things which some of us are not confident of. Among them are

(1) You could have been installing Lilo to the MBR of the wrong disk all the time and sda1 in fact can boot satisfactorily. It didn't do so because it was booted by a wrong MBR that nobody knew about. By putting Lilo in the MBR of all three disks eliminates such uncertainty.

(2) The command "lilo-b /dev/sda" may be a more robust or a better implementation of Lilo than runing the script off "liloconfig".

(3) You may have reported the wrong partition of Windows that booted successfully in Post #34. Had you reported correctly as per your lilo.conf of Post #25 the first Windows accepted by Lilo would have been "Windows added" and not "Windoze added" as claimed in Post #33. If Post #33 were correct the lilo.conf in Post #25 would need label=Windoze in the third last line.

There is no point in dwelling on it as many things will become obvious to you with time.

I am glad that we solve the problem the Lilo way but Grub would have been a lot easier to tackle such a problem because (1) It can tell us the disk order as handed down by the Bios (2) It can be booted manually without any configuration (3) It never needs a re-validation (of running "lilo" after each change) and (4) Every operating system can be booted by a floppy.

I would never drop Lilo for Grub unless there is a technical issue with it. However Grub has been more popular with Linux distros two years ago and is getting even more popular now. The last 10 distros I added to the box in the last week all, except Slackware 11, use Grub. A Linux user should not have any apprehension of using Grub because it is fundamentally simpler, more versatile and more powerful.