Editing Lilo or MBR...HELP ME SOMEBODY...!
 

Hello people...

Hope u all ok,

I really need some of your help in here please.
In the last week i made so many clean installs that i can't even remember...
I'm not sure if these are newbie questions on not, cause i'm guessing that for most of u this is easy stuff,... anyway...
Lest's say that i've got 1 hdd with win xp pro and other with the new mandriva. Because, when at the linux install on my F(slave) which was put there after i had win installed on my C(master), linux puts Lilo in the C MBR, (is this right or m i completely wrong?), what happens if i want to take that F drive to another machine? I supose i'll have to reinstall lilo on the mbr of the other master. Is this right? and if so how do i do that?
And in the same way i'll have to delete lilo from my C in the first machine, dont i?
Last week, before this installation i'm talking about, i had a dual boot on the same hdd and decided to delete the linux partitions, which i did and after that i could not get anything up, not even windows, ... it would just crash there and then. I supose that the reason was that lilo was still in the mbr and would freak out becdause there was no linux partitions.
Oh guys... i'm suffering... please help me.

I dont know if i went on n on ... and could not explain myself adequately.
I hope you understood my dilema.

Thanks a million in advance

all the best

Lilo installing to the mbr of C: is right.
Right, if you move the drive to another machine you would have to install lilo there.
Right, if you're going to remove the linux partition you want to uninstall lilo from the mbr as it contains location information for bootable partitions. The uninstall command is lilo -U or -u

There are other options for where to install lilo but I personally had no luck with them.

dracolich is basically correct - what is unsaid is that this all requires a bootable Linux system. Say Knoppix, or your install disk in a recovery or chroot mode.

What might be easier for you is to change the BIOS boot device to make your current secondary the boot disk, then install Linux with lilo going to the MBR of that disk.
Change the BIOS back, boot the XP disk, go to recovery console and run fixmbr.

This way the two disks will be independent, but will require you to change the BIOS to flip-flop between operating systems.
However, you will be able to take the secondary out, and use it as a boot disk on another machine without having to do any "clean-up" - on either machine.

Thanks a lot dracolich and syg00,
but what u r saying syg, if i got it right is a new linux install on my slave drive,(set as master), and getting lilo in there; and then fixing the mbr on what it was my master with xp. But then if lilo is working at boot time from my linux drive which by now would be the master one, if i take that drive away what is going to boot the xp drive left? (which at this point i would have to set as master again).
M i getting confused?...
U see, my question is:
If lilo on the linux drive was taking over the boot of both drives, stops because i take the drive away...what is going to boot win?
Would win still boot? ...

The answer to your question is that each disk has a boot record - the fixboot will put the XP one back on your C: drive - which must be the boot disk when you do it. Which of the boot records is the (active) MBR (M is for MASTER) is determined by which disk the BIOS designates as the boot device.
Once the Linux disk is removed, and the XP made boot, its boot record (by definition) is the MBR.

If you are lucky, you may be able to dual boot from the Linux disk - it's easy enough to set up, but the installers typically don't handle the situation very well when the XP disk is non-primary; as will be the case when you boot the Linux disk.