I've recently put a second hardrive into my computer. I have it set as slave and just put windows XP on it.

Under my lilo config I added the entry

#Windows bootable partition config begins
other= /dev/hdb1
label = Windows
table=/dev/hdb
#Windows bootable partion config ends

When I go to load windows, It just hangs. If I unplug my 1st Hardrive (Hda) and restart, windows loads itself just fine.

Whats up with this? Is there some trick to this?

Windows likes to be first, apparently.

what sense does that make? It's on a completely different disk?


If that HAS to be the case (which sounds stupid, but I guess thats part for course of M$ ) then how can I get lilo to show up if I set hdb to primary boot?

I would recommend changing the physical order of the hds: hda -> hdb, hdb -> hda; make sure they're jumpered correctly. Then install lilo to the mbr of hda.

Ah I see, so you suggest installing lilo onto the hard drive in which Windows currently occupies, then changing the jumpers and boot order so that the Windows Drive is the primary and master drive?

edit: Also, wouldn't that require me to change all of the designations on my Fstab & the entries on lilo ?

Heh, I got it. it as a little of what you said, a little of what I did.

For any other tourtured souls out there with a similar problem:

this is what I did.


1) Swap jumpers around so windows drive is master, and linux drive is slave
2) In bios set the boot order so that the linux drive is the 1st hard drive to boot (after cd, usb, etc)
3) using a rescue disk of some sorts, set so that you boot onto your Linux Harddrive. Edit your fstab so that everything that was hda* is now hdb* , then go into you lilo.conf and do the same. Whatever you had your windows drive set to before , set it to hda*

ALTERNATIVE STEP BEFORE STEP ONE TO ELIMINATE STEP THREE(and should probably do this in hindside, but not sure if it's allowd)
Edit your fstab so that everything that was hda* is now hdb* , (assuming that before they were hda & hdb, just whatever they were before, swap them) then go into you lilo.conf and do the same. . Whatever you had your windows drive set to before , set it to hda*

Make sure you type in command "lilo" before you restart

Well done!