Hey everyone. I'm having a problem booting into Linux from the hard disk. Here's my system to the best of my memory (I'm at work--if this is insufficient info, I can post more later when I get home)
Hard-Drive Partitions
hdc 6GB fat
hdc1 769 MB swap
hdc2 50 MB /boot
hdc3 don't remember
hdc4 don't remember
hdc5 30 GB /
hdc6 10 GB /var
hdc7 ~20 GB fat

I am using Lilo. I have it set right now to go into the Windows XP boot menu. When I select Linux to use Lilo I get L 9A 9A 9A 9A.... However, I can boot to Linux from a floppy which has my root partition set at hdc5, which it is. hdc5 is also set as a bootable partition. I know the problem comes from the fact that I set my /boot partition separately from my / partition. How should my lilo.conf be set up. I spent about an hour last night with different combinations. Should I install lilo at hdc2 or hdc5? In lilo.conf should boot=/dev/hdc2 or /dev/hdc5? I followed some online instructions adding a line to boot.ini and having a bootsect.lnx file in the c: drive which i copied using dd. Is that necessary? I'm all turned around. Before I messed around with lilo.conf, boot=/dev/hdc5 and selecting Linux from the Windows boot menu did successfully start LILO, but there was only the option to boot Windows (heh). When I selected that it went back to the Windows boot menu. There were no options for root=, label=, etc in lilo.conf for booting to Linux. Any tips?

Thanks,
Zach

Maybe you could post your lilo.conf file - it may well help someone to see what the problem is.

From the man page:

Errors 99 and 9A usually mean the map file (-m or map=) is not readable, likely because LILO was not re-run after some system change, or there is a geometry mis-match between what LILO used (lilo -v3 to display) and what is actually being used by the BIOS

if you boot with your floppy then run as root: /sbin/lilo, what is the reponse?

Well, I took the plunge and installed lilo to the MBR of the drive. That solved the problem. I guess lilo didn't like booting from the partition I originally set it at. Now it works great!

I've had a similar issue with a dual boot IBM Thinkpad running Windows XP and Mandrake 10 community (see http://pbhj.alicious.com for details).

In order not to touch the MBR, as I didn't know how XP would cope with that, I did as you appear to have and installed Lilo to the first sector of the root partition. This works fine, creating the linux binary file using dd and placing it on the C: drive for the windows loader to use.

However, whenever changes are made to boot items, Mandrake updates Lilo (I presume) without telling me. This breaks the boot and I have to dd the first sector and re-create the linux boot binary that WinXP loader uses.

My error is like "LILO 99 99 99 99 99 ....".

HTH if someone else has a similar problem.

The exact same thing just happend to me and what is strange is that when you choose to use the MBR it says " " could be dangerous ". Ive already fixed mine by booting from the boot floppy and rerunning liloconfig.