I had Windows XP Pro SP1 installed then i decided to try linux. So I downloaded the 3 cds for mandrake 9.1 and burnt them. I installed with no problems and played around getting use to the os. Then i had exams comming up so i didnt play around too much but needed to test Windows 2003 Server for a class i was talking (not related to school) installed it thinking that there would be no problems, the install went though with no problems and i booted my computer up a few times b4 noticing that the LILO was missing. Now i cant get into linux and play around ! is my only option wiping out the partiton for linux and reinstalling???

Your Mandrake bootCD should have an option to rewrite the MasterBootRecord.

Your linux partition is still there. Like ppuru said, you just need to reinstall lilo to your MBR. If you can boot off your cd and run 'lilo' as root, it should reinstall your old one. Windows kindly overwrites lilo for you when it installs.

Oh, BTW, you can use windows 2003 bootloader to load linux, but in that case, you need to adjust lilo to reside in your linux partition. This is the recommended way of using win2000/2003 with linux, as MS has been nice enough to make sure that those versions of windows don't boot if their bootloaders aren't in charge.

Get the 'RIP Linux Rescue System'. You can get it from
http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-r...looplinux/rip/ .
You will find the RIP Floppy startup image and RIP CD-ROM boot image and a readme which is useful. But you will have to get hold of another PC with win/linux installed, from which to install the images onto floppy/CD, with the instructions in the README file.
You also have to know your /dev/hd** partition where u installed linux. It will boot u to ur linux system from where you can modify your lilo configuration. I found it very useful. Hope it will help.

thanx i'll give it a try when im not busy... Im constantly playing with somewith my computer hasnt been off for more than 2-3 hours at time since i got it a in 01. I got to get another box to play with linux because with dual booting (or triple in my case) i can only have 1 os running at a time.

Anyway im going to try the bootable cd thing because i have no idea what /dev/hd** is.

sux being a new-b

That's kind of important. But simple enough. In Linux, devices are treated as files. /dev is the directory where those files live. Your IDE drive devices are like so:

primary master /dev/hda
primary slave /dev/hdb
secondary master /dev/hdc
secondary slave /dev/hdd

If it's a SCSI device, subsitute 's' for 'h'.

Then you have four primary partitions - /dev/hda1 would be the first partition on the primary master IDE drive. Extended partitions start their numbers at 5, after the four primaries, even if you don't use all four primaries. So your first extended partition on the same drive would be /dev/hda5.

Whenever anyone says '/dev/hd*' or something similar, they're just telling you to substitute the correct device for the generic example.

You're going to need to know your devices for all kinds of reasons, so I figured I'd say that.