Very frustrating
 

Hi
Have tried on several occasions to install Slack 12 on an Acer Aspire 5633wlmi laptop. I want to dual boot Vista sp1 till I get confident with slack.

I go thru the setup procedure from start to finish.
Partitions are
1. Windows (ntfs)
2. linux (ext3)
3. Linux swap
4. Files (ntfs)

All goes well till comes to installing lilo. "Sorry lilo has encountered an error snd did not install"
I have had the Linux (ext3) partition set to bootable and not bootable also tried installing to mbr on both occasions also to root. Same result every time. I have even tried making a usb boot disk still no joy.

Hope this all makes sense, please help

Thanks Edd

I think it's a Vista/Acer problem with the MBR. Try installing Lilo to your root partition and boot off the Slack CD with the "root=" line about two or three lines above boot,substituting your config for the example. Do not forget the "noinitrd ro".

which version of slack 12
 

Were you trying 12.0, 12.1, or 12.2?

I was having trouble installing lilo on a poweredge 2650 with the slack 12.1 cd, getting error messages like "raid can't stat /dev/fd0" (I was trying to install lilo to floppy), and this occurred even when manually trying to install lilo after setup had ran.

When I tried the slack 12.2 cd, there was no glitch to installing lilo.

Hi,

By chance do you have virus protection setup in the BIOS?

Thank you for replies.
Sorry, It is slack version 12.0. Am in the process of downloading 12.2. Annoying thing is I paid for v 11.0 and v 12.0 if I remember rightly had similar probs on both.
Not clued up enough at all on Linux to be able to run a standalone Slackware box.
Could the 4gb memory be an issue?
Btw no bios virus protection enabled that I am aware of.
Are there any hidden options in the phoenix bios and does anybody know how to access?

Hi,

You can try the 'del' key at 'POST' to see if that gets you into your BIOS. On power up during the POST you are display the key to get into the BIOS. Some BIOS use the 'del' key while others may use the 'F1' key to get into the BIOS.

AFICT, this isn't a problem with hardware per say but the Slackware installer. I've never gotten lilo to install successfully in the many years I've been using Slackware. Judging from the ammount of posts concerning this issue over the years, it backs that conclusion up. I think it might have something to do with the creation of the lilo.conf but never bothered to debug it.

If you boot using the Slackware disk as mentioned, and then manually create your lilo.conf, it will install just fine. Hasn't been a big issue for me because I use grub instead. Since there isn't an option to use grub on the installer, I have to boot with the Slackware disk anyway the first time around.

I have found that to be true.

If you use the "Auto Install"(I don't remember exactly what it is called...) option, it usually fails, but if you use the "Advanced", where you go step by step through it, and THEN install to the mbr, it seems to work just fine.

At least with my hardware. Since at least 10.0 in my case.

Add another vote to installing lilo this way. I don't think I have ever used the non-advanced option and I have never had any problems. Knock on wood...

What about password protected disk?
 

Some laptops turn on password protection of the disk by default. Please check the BIOS settings. If it is on, many strange things happen. I never saw exactly yours problem, but it looks similar.