i m trying to install slackware 14 amd64 on dell inspiron n5110 laptop, everything goes normal during installation but when i get to the part where lilo is installed i get following:

Warning : unable to determine video adapter in use in the present system.

Warning : Video adpater does not support VESA BIOS extensions needed for display of 256 colors.

Fatal: Partition entry not found. (what is meant by that if it means primary partition then i might ask where is root filesystem is being installed?)

i tried all almost all the listed framebuffer options in lilo. including standard.

Can you attach your lilo.conf file? Are you installing on mbr or on root partition? From the error message looks like it tries to install on root partition instead of mbr but no partition is specified. The video errors could be ignorable.

lilo.conf does not get created in /etc, i m trying to install it on mbr.

also i have around 1.05m unusable space that i think is bothering lilo, output from cfdisk kinda look like this:

how can i fix it without re-partitioning whole disk? its 500gb disk and there is a lot of important data on it.

ok fixed partition problem. here is lilo.conf

but still got the same problem

just installed debian everything worked fine.

i really think slackware should get rid of crappy lilo and start using grub.
i m seriously annoyed, what a piece of crap.

If lilo was a "piece of crap" it wouldn't be the default bootloader in Slack.

Grub tends to install incorrectly at times also.

Well they need to re-think that.

agreed but its easy fix. i came across a lot of problems on my friends systems and i fixed them in matter of minutes. plus there is lot of helping material out there and also there are many people who can help you out unlike lilo.
if it is so great how come no one solved my problem? i'll be happy to know how to fix it if anyone can help. i love to learn but don't want to bump my head on brick wall.

Anyway, I'm glad that slackware uses the LiLo and not the crappy Grub. I have never used a system of my own with grub, including Slack, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Backtrack...

yes, and i tried commenting out these lines, still no luck.
thanks for valuable reply.

No disrespect to lilo developers but the thing is when i was learning grub i never got stuck like this. People who uses grub not just say its outstanding, they solve the problem too.
maybe i m annoyed too much, i tried so many things and nothing seems to work.

its very definition of crappy software, no matter what you do it still sucks.

thanks again, looking forward for your reply because it seems you are the only one who is trying to help instead of just apprising lilo.

would you please also hook me up with some material so i can make myself familiar with lilo?

This line should be /dev/sda3

Looks like you have a typo, you typed dec instead of dev. Damn crappy Lilo not able to detect and fix your typo.

Well, actually it did detect YOUR error.. that's why you are getting this error message. It doesn't know WTH /dec is.

As has been said, you can ignore the warning video errors.

I have been using Slackware since version 3.0 way back in 1995, have installed it on to many machines to count, servers, desktops laptops.... I have never had an issue with Lilo. But again, I have never dual booted either.

People might be more inclined to help if you drop the immature cocky attitude, I understand your frustrated but saying things like Lilo is crappy software and then second guessing the Slackware developers... who have been doing this probably longer than you have been alive... well that is just over the top, next you will be giving advice to Linus on how to fix all the stuff he has screwed up in the kernel!

That said, I hope you get it worked out, really Lilo is quite simple, simpler that Grub, you just need to get familiar with it and watch those typos!

Oh and remember to run "/sbin/lilo -v" after editing and saving lilo.conf.

Here is a clear and simple explanation on how Lilo works:

http://www.control-escape.com/linux/lilo-cfg.html

Also, the lilo.conf man page is quite explanatory. Once you get familiar with it, everything will be piece of cake. Even dual, tripple, quadrupel boot. It really isn't crappy, it just demands more user intervention than grub.

One more thing. I'm not familiar with that "table" entry, but will look into that.

well typo here not in lilo.conf. i typed it here by looking on the laptop screen. but i double checked its fine and still got the error, also i think it should have worked when i commented windows entry.
I did not manually created lilo.conf file it was generated during installation by setup procedure. i tried to fix it afterwards bit as of now i m failing miserably.

my "immature cocky attitude" was after when i was trying my best to fix the problem and everyone else was jut ignoring the problem and apprising lilo. i m not "second guessing" anyone.

Anyway i was angry at that time. thanks for the help and link, i m looking into it right now.

Thanks, i m going to look into it.