Uninstalling LILO
 

Hi. I've been trying to install Mandrake 9.2 on a laptop for, oh, several weeks now, and have never gotten it to run properly, even after getting some good help from this site. I've decided to throw in the towel for Linux on the laptop, and return it to a Windows-only machine. (But I've got a 5-year-old old desktop I'm planning to turn into a Linux-only "learning platform.")

Removing the partitions that Mandrake is on is no problem (I've got PartitionMagic), but I really couldn't understand the Mandrake manual's instructions for removing LILO. I can't do it from Linux--Linux just won't start. How do I do it from Windows XP?

And also, am I going to have any problems booting into Windows after I remove LILO, or will my boot sequence just return to its pre-LILO status?

Many thanks for your help.

all you needed to do was type either :
/sbin/lilo -u
or
/sbin/lilo -U

which is the command to uninstall it .

or use a windows bootdisk and type:
fdisk /mbr

and if you have the bootable windows xp disk, if memory serves correct i think you boot with the cd, and press R to go to recovery console, and then type
bootcfg /rebuild

but don't quote me on that, but wouldn't hurt to try... i assure you it won't break anything if it isn't the proper command .

Thanks DrOzz. I tried to do it from the WinXP CD. I typed R to go to the recovery console, but when I got there, it would only let me type one letter, so I couldn't type bootcfg /rebuild. All I could type was "b," and then I couldn't type anything further.

I have an additional problem related to that--my WinXP is the Japanese version (I live in Japan), and I can't read more than a very little bit of Japanese. I'm scared of hitting Enter on the wrong thing and accidentally formatting my hard drive. Is there no way to uninstall LILO from inside Windows? If not, I think I may have to find a pro to do it for me.

well i personally can not think of a possible way of doing this from within windows ... but hey maybe it is possible ...
but i mean, all you need is a boot disk ... if you have linux boot or rescue disk, just pop it in and type that lilo command i supplied above, or you could always try fdisk /mbr with a windows boot disk ...

Was the one "letter" you could type suppose to be the number of the Windows install you wanted to work with? After choosing "R" for the console you are prompted to select the Windows install to work with. Most likely "1" would be your only choice. After that you should have a prompt that looks like a dos prompt - "c:\". Then you can type commands.

Netizen

oh yah ... lol
good thinking netizen, now that you say that, that is exactly what his problem was ...

Thanks guys--I'm sure your suggestions will work fine. Unfortunately, my computer is refusing to accept my Administrator password--though I know I'm giving it the right one--and all the instructions I find online for changing that password are not working. And I can't proceed without it. But that's a Windows problem, not a Linux one, and I won't bother you with it here.

I did try something else: I reinstalled Mandrake as a minimal install (since previous attempts to reinstall would hang and lock up), command-line only. Then I used the command line to follow DROzz's instructions for uninstalling LILO. However, it only uninstalled the reinstalled LILO--the old LILO was still there! So, still no luck on that front.

Thanks anyway. I'll try to track down the XP problem, but as I should be getting an English version of XP in a few weeks, maybe I'll just endure a complex booting process until then.