I recently did a clean install of RH 9.0 over MDK 9.1 with formats on the '/',' /usr', and swap partitions. My '/mnt/win_c' [NTFS], '/mnt/win_d' [FAT32], and '/home' [ext3] partitions were kept as is. (I do understand that until I add NTFS support, RH 9.0 can not do anything with my NTFS WinXP partition, which is the primary partition.)

I requested LILO as bootloader on the MBR, with Linux as primary OS and WinXP as secondary OS.

When I rebooted, I got the old MDK LILO screen, which froze when I selected the Linux option. GRUB does not work either.

My questions are:

Does LILO/GRUB not work because the MBR is in NTFS format?
If so, will adding NTFS support allow me to boot from the MBR?

Bob

The MBR is not in NTFS format. The MBR is read by the BIOS, which doesn't know how to read any filesystem. The MBR is just the first half-kilobyte on the disk. Nothing special is req'd to read it.
Looks like lilo wasn't installed properly. Boot rescue with the RH cd, and switch to your current installation using 'chroot /mnt/sysimage'. Then edit the /etc/lilo.conf , either manually or with a Red Hat tool if available. Then run 'lilo'. The old Mandrake lilo won't boot because it was looking for Mandrake's kernel, which was erased.

I tried various ways to boot into RH without a floppy with no luck. I even reinstalled WinXP and RH 9.0. I tried each combination of GRUB & LILO and MBR & '/boot' . All I get is the WinXP boot screen.

It seems that RH does not want to 'touch' the MBR.

I was hoping to move to RH / Fedora, but two things are keeping me from it: the inability to boot without a floppy, and support for my hsfmodem (I have a MDK driver, but I don't want to pay linuxant for their RH product).

Without solutions to these issues, I will probably stick with Mandrake.

Oh well....