I installed slackware and lilo doesn't ever start it just boots straight to xp.

I have 2 hard drives xp is on master linux is on slave. I installed xp and set up my partitions linux using 7 tools partition manager. There are 2 partitions one swap and one for everything else. I then booted off the slackware CD and installed 2 different times. The first time when it came to the lilo config I selected auto configuration and put lilo on the hard drive. After finishing the install It just booted striaght to xp. I started over and chose manual lilo config. The only difference was it found my linux partition and my ntfs (xp) partition (and I think it asks to make them bootable in which case I said yes to both...dont quite remember) But anyway after doing that It still boots straight to XP.

Any ideas of what I did wrong and how to fix it? I would prefer to not have to install it all over considering its there allready nevertheless doing so would cause no harm at this point.

install lilo into the master boot sector of your master disk

How and why would this help? I've spent about 12 hours installing backed up software and files and I'm concerned about losing the ability to boot xp. Correct me if I'm wrong but if I insalled to the MBR then it would overwrite the boot record for windows and with lilo. Then lilo should allow me to boot to either xp or slack. But if anything went wrong then I'd lose my ability to boot to xp. Considering this I would believe its safer to put it on the hard drive.

I guess I'd just like to understand the rationale before I go do it. Is installing to MBR the "correct" thing to do in this case for some reason?

Yeah you were right writing it to the MBR worked perfectly. However fluxbox didn't automatically start up but I'm not too concerned about that I can figure that out on my own, I hope!

Yeah the setup sais it is 'possibly unsafe' to set the boot loader to MBR.
Have no idea why it might be unsafe...
Maybe because Windows or some other OS installer will rewrite the MBR to its own taste and destroy the old MBR. If yhe boot loader is placed at the beginning of a partiton, it is safer from such incidents.

But then you have to configure a boot loader on the MBR anyway or create a boot disk, that is a rather boring alternative in my opinion.

Another minus - When You place the boot loader on MBR, when you decide to remove the harddisk, wich you installed linux to, it has some boot loader files on it, so when you remove it, the system will not boot, because lilo is placed on the linux disk.

xwmconfig
and then select Fluxbox. However, I highly recommend removing the version of fluxbox you have and installing the latest "beta" version. It's not your average beta software.

Guys Hello,

I am the newbiest newbie here and I ve been looking to yous forums for a while, and finally after installing slackware 10 in my system I had a prob whith my lilo too. This was the most close forum to my prob.

my primary master is linux ain my slave is xp. After having done everything in the lilo.conf file as above, linux works perfrctly, but windows xp refuse to boot.

So every time I need to boot to winxp i need to alter the boot sequence from BIOS (I set it into something like D, A, SCSI). Can you help me

Anything is welcome

Thx

Post your lilo.conf file and what is the windows partition?

# Windows bootable partition config begins
other = /dev/hdb1
label = Windows
table = /dev/hdb
# Windows bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/hda5
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends

that is my lilo, and i had some talk with s/one who told me that grub is better than the other.

Try running liloconfig as root again, select "Expert", Start with a new LILO header, add the linux partition, then add the windows partition and Install LILO. That should do it for you. If not, maybe try Grub. I don't use it and I have no problems with LILO but it's always good to learn something new.

ok thx =o)