Hello, hoping someone can shed some light on this issue:

When cold-booting, system boots to WinXP automatically. If I reboot, then I get LILO options and can boot to Mandriva LE2005. If I shut down completely and power up again, system goes automatically to WinXP.

It cannot be the countdown running out, and Linux is set as default OS to boot...

System:
MB: Abit AN7
CPU: AMD 3200XP
1GB DDR400 RAM
Maxtor SATA 200GB Primary
WD 120 GB IDE Secondary (Linux resides here)
GeForce FX5700 Vid Card

What other info is needed?

I think that we need the /etc/lilo.conf, but you could try to run /sbin/lilo ones you booted Mandriva.

Here is my /etc/lilo.conf:

# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

default="linux"
boot=/dev/hdd
map=/boot/map
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hdd5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdd6 splash=silent"
vga=794
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hdd5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdd6"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hdd5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hdd6 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/sda1
label="windows1"
table=/dev/sda
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80

I think that you need to change the line ' to and then run /sbin/lilo

But it's just a guess, you better have some boot disk or similar before trying.

How many versions of Linux do you wish to run? According to your lilo.conf you wish to select from the following versions labeled: failsafe, linux-nonfb, linux, and yet another version label linux. Is that correct? Are these the linux version options that lilo offers to you upon rebooting?

Also, is the entire second drive (the Western Digital drive) dedicated to Linux?

I'm not certain that switching the /boot/#### settings is the right thing to do just YET. Switching it might cause the machine to fail to boot into either OS. So I'd wait on that for a bit.

Also, I find the "resume=/dev/hdd6" lines interesting. I was looking for something in the .conf file that would point the boot process in an alternative direction upon reboot (as opposed to cold booting), and the "resume" seems to point the machine in the direction of /hdd6 rather than /hdd5. Perhaps rebooting satisfies the "resume" condition and the reboot process starts from /hdd6 partition. Whereas a cold boot tries to run from a bad or corrupted /dev/hdd5 partition and fails, so it skips linux and moves on to windows.