I have a HDD partitioned as follows:
hda1 - Win98
hda2 - WinXP
hda3 - Slackware
hda4 - swap

I am using LILO to boot, and I have it configured to allow me to boot any of hda1-3. What happens at this point is I can boot Slackware fine, but if I boot hda1 I am presented with the WinXP boot loader, from which I can successfully boot either Win98 or WinXP. If I try to boot hda2 from LILO I get an error. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with XP's boot loader. Is it possible for me to get rid of it so I can boot any of the 3 OSs from LILO? It seems XP overwrote 98's partition to give that loader, I'm not sure how to overcome this.

Seems XP is acting normally. When I had 98 and XP, the XP bootloader included 98 and dos entry. You should be able to just have XP and SW entry in lilo. Man lilo have give more leads. See this for lilo.conf sample and explanation: http://www.linuxjournal.com/articles...59/3559l2.html

I understand XP is acting as it normally would. What I want to know is whether or not I can make it not do so. It does work with simply a Slack entry and a XP/98 entry in LILO, but it would be more desirable to boot all three from a single menu, instead of requiring two steps to boot two of them.

Possibly this How-To might help you.

I will offer an initial quick guess that all you need do is edit the XP boot.ini file. The How-To explains that file.

Hope You fixed the problem.

Just in case... I'm using NT loader from XP to boot Win98, XP and Slack 10.1

Setting it is not to hard all you have to do is configure lilo to install to the root of your linux partition (setting boot and root partitions in liloconf to /dev/hda3). Then you use this command

dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

It will copy first 512 bytes of your linux partition to bootsect.lnx file. Copy this file to root directory on hda1 (Your Win98 partition).

After that all you need to do is one or two changes in your boot.ini file.

Here is boot.ini that I use for some time

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=C:\BOOTSECT.LNX
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\XP="XP"
C:\="Windows 98 plus"
C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux"

You can find all this and much more in Linux-NT-loader HowTo


Good luck!

----------------------------------------------------------
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

And every time you run the lilo command, you have to remember to copy the boot sector record *before* you reboot.
Serious PITA. With grub you only have to do this copy once.
May not be a big issue for some people, but I change my (grub) config a lot.
I gave up doing this (i.e. using ntldr) back in the days of NT 3.1 - I always use grub installed to the MBR. Each to their own.

I would think the OP could also fixboot the XP partition, then re-install Win98 to get io.sys back in control there, then reinstall lilo to the MBR.
Of course every upgrade to XP will continue to blow the lilo MBR code away, and probably take over the Win98 boot again.

Seems like a lot of work to save having to make a decision in ntldr.

When I first began experimenting with multibooting, I used the same approach. I even booted my old DOS 6.22 partition that way. However, when I discovered GRUB I quickly stopped using this method.

Although the Windows boot loader (ntldr) can be used to multi-boot a box, ntldr is somewhat myopic with respect to how things boot. Part of the reason is the weird method the MS developers created long ago to assign drive letters to partitions. This can get really weird because all versions of Windows are designed as single-box operating systems (OSs). That is, Windows is not designed to co-exist with other OSs, including different versions of Windows.

For example, I still have my old DOS 6.22 / WFWG 3.11 partition at hda1. Many years ago I still needed this OS but today I maintain that small 512 MB partition as a conversation piece. Regardless, I also have a Win98 boot partition (gotta have scandisk handy if one is going to maintain a shared FAT32 partition ). Well, DOS needs to stay at hda1 to run correctly and when Win98 boots that DOS partition gets assigned as C: and the Win98 partition gets assigned as D:. Not what I want and with the standard Windows boot loaders there are no solutions. But with GRUB I can use the hide and unhide parameters to avoid that issue. When I boot into Win98 I have GRUB configured to hide hda1 and Win 98 then boots correctly as C:.

Another example is I long ago installed a second NT4 Workstation system partition at hda3. My primary NT4 system partition is at hda2. I use this alternate partition to help with backups and restorations and avoid all the nonsensical file locks that NT systems like to create. Very convenient and I recommend W2K and XP users do likewise. Although I never have been attacked by a virus or Trojan, this alternate system partition provides a handy backdoor to resolve such challenges. Regardless, if I were to use the Windows boot loader to boot into my alternate C: partition, Windows will maintain file locks on that first partition containing the boot loader as well as screwing up the drive lettering. Not good and for the long run, frustrating to work around.

Possibly subsequent versions of ntldr (Windows 2000, XP) are smarter than the original NT version, perhaps not, but GRUB solved a lot of issues for me. I really wish PV would join the 21st century and provide users the option of installing GRUB rather than LILO. Just my opinion.

Woodsman has explained it.

I almost put a gun to each boot loader to make them boot the maximum number of systems for me.

Here are the results

(1) NTLDR - 10 maximum

(2) Lilo - 27 maximum

(3) Grub - over 100

As far as I am aware you only need 1/10 of the effort of Ntldr to multi boot with Grub but get 10 times better results. Here is the proof. 3 Dos and 3 Windows are buried in this Grub menu.

Ntldr is really a white elphant because it needs every Linux in a working order with a boot loader available in its root partition. If a Linux reach this state would it need another boot loader to boot it ?