I had a computer that would dual boot XP and Red Hat 9. I was using Red Hat's grub installed in the MBR to handle the dual booting. I decided that I wanted to switch over to Debian Woody, so I installed it over my RH9 partitions. I did not change the partitions in any way, I only installed debian where red hat used to be. I also installed lilo to the mbr like debian asks in the install. I assumed that it would just replace grub and allow me to boot into windows just fine, as before.

However, now I can boot into debian just fine, but when I try to boot into XP I get the
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition... errors until it reboots. Since I didn't change any partitions, I assume this must have something to do with the MBR. But since grub was already there, I don't understand why this would have happened? Any ideas? Thanks.

"I don't understand why this would have happened? Any ideas? Thanks."

There is probably something wrong with your file /etc/lilo.conf. Fix lilo.conf and then run lilo for the changes to take effect. Here is a lilo HOWTO to help you work your way through the problem:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO.html

For safety's sake you should first create a lilo boot floppy as described in section 8. That way if you screw up lilo.conf you can still boot with the floppy.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

Check "cfdisk -P s" (as root) to confirm partitions.

If Windows is on /dev/hda1 (first partition, first hard disk) then add (per "man lilo.conf"):

other = /dev/hda1
label = WinXP
table = /dev/hda

to your /etc/lilo.conf (with your favorite text editor, as root).
Then run "/sbin/lilo" as root and you should be good.

Good Luck.

Ok, I tried what you said, 2damncommon, but it didn't work. Actually, I am not so sure that it is lilo at all. Because when I try to load XP it gives me the screen asking if I want to load it in Safe mode or normally. Only once I pick any of the selections does it give my the before mentioned error. So, it appears that the problem isn't that it's not getting to the right partition. The debian install must have done something to the partitions.

Just on a side note, I also upgraded my computer, adding a new motherboard, cpu, and ram. I don't see how any of that would have caused this problem, unless it had something to do with the bios. What should I do? Thanks for helping me out so far.

One more thing, I happened to have PartitionMagic on XP. Well, I tried loading the PM boot disks and it gives me this error:

"PartitionMagic has detected an error 116 on the partition starting at sector 77112000 on disk 1.

The starting LBA value is 77112000 and the CHS value is 16450559.
The LBA and CHS values must be equal.
PartitionMagic has verified that the LBA value is correct and can fix the CHS value.

Would you like PartitionMagic to fix this error?"

So far, I have said no because I don't know what this will do and if it even has anything to do with booting XP problem.

In case anyone would like to know, the problem had nothing to do with the bootloader. The issue was because I had changed my motherboard. Linux loaded perfectly the first time, but XP has a bug (go figure) that required me to do an in-place upgrade of XP. It basically installs all the system files again, without deleting the programs and user files.

Once again, Linux proves its superiority over Windows.