Hi guys and gals, I'm having an interesting lilo issue in Mandrake 8, Please help.
 

I hope someone can help me...

I have "STF"LQ.org and apparently everyone else has normal
lilo problems. My problem is when I am in X and Drake
Control Center, the boot options for Lilo shows the option
for windows, but the block where you specify the "HDA1" it
is completely blank. No choice can be made. If I follow
through withit anyways, it will show the drive as ()
Obviously it doesn't work. Here is what happened which
caused this. I formatted my Dos Partition which was solely
Win98. I then installed an NTFS file system and
repartitioned for 3GB. I could not complete the
installation for lack of a serial #. I left it alone and
formatted the remainder of the drive for Win98. If I
fdisk my boot records it will boot to Win98. I can boot
into Linux with the CD or if I reset Lilo and it will boot
into Linux but it will not give me any option except for
default loading to my main Linux "HDA5". It doesn't even
ask me to use the RX boot, which is specified in my Lilo?
I'm puzzled. Is there any way to tell Linux to detect the
Win98 installation as bootable?

Thank you,
Bruce
www dot superimposed dot com
Superimposed MEdia

It seems that whatever GUI tool you are using to configure LILO is flaky and lacks options. It's easier just to modify LILO's configuration file then update it. Can you post the contents of your /etc/lilo.conf file, and what partition is windows 98 on? hda1?

Hi Obi,

That's what's puzzling me. When I go to /mount/windows
there is no "plus" symbol next to it, and when I click on
the folder it shows zero items. It show my cdrom and floppy
drive but when I choose the windows, it just states 0 files.
For some reason Linux won't detect my Win98 partition, which
was actually installed after my NTFS partition. I'm really
confused how to make it work, besides reinstalling Mandrake.

Hmm, it could be that your partitioning has changed the number of the Windows 98 partition. How's about the following?

The output of "fdisk -l /dev/hda" (note, that's a small L, not a capital I).

The contents of the file /etc/fstab

And the contents of /etc/lilo.conf

The first command should give us the place of the Windows 98 partition, from which we can then edit Linux and LILO to recognise it.

Thank you Obi,

I'll try it tonight after work. I should be able to
report back with the results this time tomorrow.

I did what you suggested and I found out the NTFS is on
HDA1 and Windows is on HDA3. I will post what is set on
HDA2 when I get home because I can't remember what was on
it. That'll be in a little while.