Hi! I know this thread will looks like a lots of others... but, my problem seem to be different. I want to do a dual boot with Mandrake 10.0 and XP, I first tried to install Mandrake after XP, that doesn't work, that give me only a " L_ " when I reboot, so I formated both partition, and then install Mandrake first (I write the boot sequence to ther MBR) and then, when I try to boot with a CD or a boot floppy, (except for the Mandrake CD) I only got a black screen. But... that's special, ie: For the XP cd, I have the message "Press any key to boot from CD......." and then when I press a key I got the black screen.

I think the problem come from the fact that I wrote the boot sequence to the MBR, but if that's it, I don't know how to solve the problem.

Thank you all!

Alex

When you get the 'L' after you reboot, this (usually) means that you're not booting from the right drive/partition. I think you're getting the 'press any key' option because you're BIOS is looking for boot medium in the wrong place.
In a nutshell:
1) Install XP on the primary master drive, first partition.
2) Install Mandrake on the slave drive, or second partition on your master drive if you've only got one HDD.
3) When you come to the install bootloader option during the Mandrake install, choose to install the bootloader in the MBR. This will overwrite the Windows MBR and lilo will add XP to your bootloader automatically.
4) When you're done installing, make sure you re-enter the BIOS and set your primary boot device back to the hard drive before trying to boot one of the OS's you've just installed - your BIOS will probably call your primary master HD0.

I would like to... but I can't boot with XP cd, or a floppy, or another boot device, except for mandrake 10.0 CD1 and linux partition.
So I'm really stuck here.

hey! thank you all, your help help me to solve my prob.
Here what I've done
1) Make my second HD to primary boot device
2) NOW I can boot with XP cd
3) Install XP on second HD
4) With partition magic, deleted all partiton on first HD
5) Boot with a floppy
6) Fdisk/CMBR 2 (fdisk/mbr on the first HD)
7) Run maxblast, and do a low level format on the first HD
8) create partiton, re-change the HD primary boot device to my first HD
9) Install XP
10) Now the problem was that the partiton letter was "F:", the "C:" was the second HD, where I install XP on #3)
11) change drive lettre to "free" the C: option
12) Re-format and re-install XP, now on C:
13) Install Mandrake 10.0, with boot sector on the first sector of the partition NOT MBR
14) That's it!!!!!