Hi,

Firstly a big thanks to the guy who helped me out the other day. I installed Mandrake 10, but couldnt see the point at which to create a boot disk.

So here I am back in good old Windows with no way to get into Linux. Is there any boot disks for LInux I can download from within Windows, or is there a Windows disk that will let me choose my OS?

Thanks

Antony
P.S I also tried in BIOS but couldnt see it there without getting worried as I am no BIOS expert

You can use your Mandrake CD's for this.
Set your machine to boot from CD and put in Mandrake install CD 1. When it loads up, press F1 for more options.
At the bottom of the screen there's the "boot:" prompt.
Type rescue
Let the program load and when it's done you can follow it through and re-install Lilo bootloader.
It should (hopefully) recognise your Win partition also and add it as the last item to the bootloader menu.
If it doesn't, you can always add this later from the Mandrake GUI - bootdrake.

Hi

Thanks for your advice. I chose the option to reinstall Linux bootloader, it completed that, rebooted and it still didnt give me the option or take me into Linux.

Any thoughts?

Antony

What version of Windoze are you using, and where did you install the bootloader?

I am using Windows XP, and when I ran the CD it didnt actually give me a choice just installed it, then went back to the main menu and so I chose reboot. It still then only loaded XP as the option.

Antony

Hmmm.
Are you partitioning a single drive or installing Mandrake on a slave drive?

I have 2 hard drives - 1 with WinXP hda and 1 with LInux hdb. I partitioned the linux hard drive as per showthread.php?s=&postid=1127549

However I dont think it asked about the 1 G partition to choose /boot option from that post.

Hope that helps and thanks for your time

Antony

OK.
I think that there are 3 or 4 possible options open to you.
1) If your machine is reletively new, there's probably an option in the BIOS to check for virus' when it starts. Sometimes having this option enabled prevents the MBR being overwritten as it might detect the new bootloader as a virus.
You should turn this option off in your BIOS if you have it.
2) If you have a virus scanner installed on XP that starts at boot time (Norton does) and scans your MBR, you should turn this off too.
3) One or more of your Mandrake install cd's might be faulty. Did you check them with md5sums before burning?
4) If options 3 turns up a dodgy disc, download it again, reburn and re-install Mandrake to your hdb. Make sure that when you get to the install bootloader option, you choose to install it on the MBR.