I've just finished a clean install of Slackware 9.1, following the instructions on the slackware site, and when I reboot I get a black screen with a flashing cursor and nothing else. I can boot with the boot disk, but that is just annoying. Any ideas?

if you can boot with the boot disk and everything else is normal, then it sounds like a problem with your boot loader. when you installed slackware, did you tell it to install LILO, and if so where? the default is to install it on the MBR, but you can also choose another location. i highly recommend installing LILO to the MBR, i've always one it that way and it's very safe, very easy to make changes, etc.

use the boot disk to boot up, then log in and check the contents of /etc/lilo.conf. please post them here. that may help us work toward a solution.

What I was able to do was boot with the first installation cd. When I was able to log in as root, I went to \etc to check the contents of lilo.conf. That file was nowhere to be found. Is booting with the installation cd the same as booting with a bootdisk (my bootdisk did not work after all -- I may have neglected to create a bootdisk for this installation -- stupid, I know)? If this is presenting a real view of my system, does that mean that lilo did not install? I had chosen to install it during the system installation, but perhaps it did not work as it had seemed to?

if lilo never comes up when you try to boot, then there's no bootloader install on the master boot record. so either lilo didn't get installed, or there's some sort of hardware problem, maybe some data was corrupted or i don't know. i would install again. make sure when it asks you where to install lilo you tell it on the mbr. also make sure when you write your partition table that the partition which will include the /boot directory (sometimes this is it's own partition, sometimes just part of /) is flagged as bootable. also make sure that you don't leave any disks in the drive when you reboot. i can't think of anything else.