I just installed slackware, I have 2 hdd's on my Ultra-ATA card, both are western digital. I have an 80GB (/dev/hde) and a 200GB (/dev/hdf) hard drive. Windows XP is installed on the 80GB drive, on the 200GB drive I already had 2 partitions, for downloads and files for my Windows OS. Then I created 2 more partitions, one for the swap partition and the other for Slackware itself. I chose the simple automatic install of LILO and when I boot up without any discs in my drives then it boots automatically to Windows XP, and if I boot up with the bootdisk that Slackware made for me it gives me the following error - "Boot failed: please change disks and press a key to continue."

....and all I wanted to do was start Slackware use the K Desktop Environment (KDE)... was that so much to ask?

Can someone please help me?

Should I reinstall and do it again from scratch?

It sounds like to me that windows boot is still installed on your mbr so windows is booting the system. If you want you can do a dual boot system, where windows is handling the initial boot, but you need to find out where you installed lilo.

Ok, well I installed Slackware Linux on /dev/hde (/dev/hde4) and the swap partition is on /dev/hde (/dev/hde3)... So I assume that LILO should be installed on /dev/hde4 but how would I access it?

I can only really help you if you want to let windows handle the initial booting as i have that setup on my laptop. Here is what you would need to do.

Boot the slackware system and do a disk dump of the first 512 bytes from hde4. This command should work:

dd if=/dev/hde4 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

This will dump a file called bootsect.lnx to what ever dir you are in. Copy that file to the root of your C: under windows. Then you can edit the boot.ini file and point it to that bootsect.lnx file to boot your windows setup. Mine looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
c:\bootsect.lnx="Debian"


Now please note. That any time you update lilo or do a kernel update you will have to redo the dump and copy because a new mbr will be installed.

Yeah if I must for now let Windows handle the booting precedure then I am more than happy with that!

I am going to give it a try!

Thanks a bunch!!!

Oh, oops I forgot that I can't boot into Slackware... I'm not sure why it's acting this way but I can't boot into it from the bootdisk or from the hard drive. I wonder if there is a way that I can tell my computer to boot up /dev/hdf4 just one time so that I can do what you have mentioned or so I can at least take a look at the lilo.conf file..... hmmm

You should install lilo to /dev/hde so that it is in the MBR else you will need to have it on the first sector of your harddrive. You can use your slackware cd to boot up or chroot to your slackware install. If you mount your install to an empty directory chroot to that directory edit /etc/lilo.conf so that its installed to /dev/hde then run lilo and restart

Ok I am gonna give this a try... brb!

Thanks a bunch!

There is hope

Ok I used the Slackware CD2 disc and it lets me log in but I think I am only logged into the CD b/c the title is: "Welcome to Linux 2.4.22, on the Slackware 9.1 bootable Linux CD-ROM!" Also is does not request for me to type in the root password that I specified during the installation of Slackware.

I am relatively new to linux, I mean I have used several dif. distros but I don't really know much about the commands. What is chroot and what exactly does it do, while booted into the Slackware 9.1 bootable CD I can't seem to even get to /dev/hdf4 or /dev/(any other drive).

Thoughts?

Ok use the Slack CD1 to do it login as root
mkdir hdd
mount /dev/hdf4 hdd/
chroot hdd/
then edit /etc/lilo.conf using vim or pico or something
then run lilo

chroot changes root to the directory you specify

Ok, you are AWESOME!

Ok so I have been able to edit the lilo.conf file and I have added windows into it, I told it that the image is /dev/hde/windows and I'm not sure if that is correct but I'm not too worried about that for now. My problem is how do I get it to save in the MBR (first sector) on /dev/hde ?

I'm using PICO and it does ask me what path to save it to but I don't know how to do that.

Ok, well I "kinda" figured it out...
I did what you said in order to create that bootsect.lnx file and then I used this command "# mcopy /bootsect.lnx a:" to copy it to a floppy disk. Then I booted into Windows XP and told it to show hidden folders and system files, I opened up c:\boot.ini with notepad (and turned off word wrap) and then I pasted "c:\bootsect.lnx="Slackware Linux" as the last line. I rebooted the system and I was given the menu that asks you to select your OS and I selected "Slackware Linux" and pressed enter. Then all I got was a screen that said "L" and that's all it said, nothing else happens after that.... What did I do wrong?

Thanks,
Erik

AFAIK to install to the mbr you just have to select a harddrive but not a partition for the boot option
at the top of lilo.conf there should be boot = /dev/whatever change it to boot = /dev/hde

Just tried it but that's not working, I still get the Microsoft boot loader which doesn't even work. Should I try writing the lilo.conf to the MBR? I found out how to do that by going to Slackware setup, then telling it the target and then going to reconfigure.

Should I give that a try?