LILO Doesn't install?!??!
 

OK, this is very weird. I'm pretty much a :newbie: so I may have done something incredibly stupid, or rushed since I have schoolwork to do (knew I should have waited till the weekend) but I was so excited that 11.0 came out that as soon as my ISOs finished downloading, I installed. I booted the installer with huge26.s (question: does the s stand for sata? I have a normal pata drive, that could cause problems maybe but I'm thinking that's not it) and installed everything (except KDEI) went through the whole mounting windows drives, etc. deal and got to the LILO configuration. Now, I have to use the expert config because my computer has a recovery partition as the first partition, which is nonbootable and the only way I can do a nondestructive XP reinstall (damn Compaq/HP - shakes fist). The automatic config tries to boot that, which results in a blank screen. In 10.2 I was able to use the expert config and select the correct drive, no problem. However, in 11.0 after I configure LILO manually, I get a message saying it can't install LILO. I realize I probably could have left the old install of LILO, especially since it had my hand-crafted bootscreen (*sniff*) that took half an hour to make (I have it on my Windows partition too thank goodness) but when I got that message I figured it didn't overwrite the old one so I rebooted, thinking all was fine. But instead upon boot I got a series of 9A 9A 9A... appearing on my screen. After trying a reinstall, trying to reconfigure LILO to no avail, I decided to just fall back to 10.2 installer, which installed LILO fine and I'm back in Windows.

OK, that was a really long story for a short question: Has anyone else had issues with huge26.s and LILO? Was I supposed to install the kernel modules or something at some point during the installation before LILO? I had read something to the effect that I would need to install kernel headers or modules if I used 2.6 but I thought that would be afterwards. When I rebooted with the autoconfigged LILO, I was able to get into Slackware but the kernel panicked at one point and stopped, something about not recognizing my keyboard? Hope that helps. (I'm guessing it's the kernel headers thing, shoulda read the readme - I figured I've installed 10.2 so many times due to having a knack for messing it up every time I boot into it (one of the reasons I ended up staying in Windows for 99.9% of the time, although once I build my own computer I'll be putting Linux on it only for a while until I save up the $$$ for vista...))

I have not yet installed 11.0 but it shouldn't be too hard. Why not let the installer do a simple install of LILO for you and then add your Windows partition after you reboot. That should work.

i.of.the.storm already explained that the "simple" LILO setup will detect the Windows partition and make that the default, which is not nice since that partition is not bootable.

LILO should install fine, if you chose the right (Slackware) partition as your boot partition, and installed LILO into the MBR.

If it breaks don't do a full re-install but instead boot from the Slackware CD and pay attention to the instructions on-screen about how to boot directly into your hard disk installation.
After you've logged in, try looking at the /etc/lilo.conf file to figure out if the problem is somewhere in there, fix it, and then re-run "lilo". Then, reboot without the CDROM in the drive and see if the computer will boot Slackware all by itself now.

Eric

Oh, sorry I didn't make it clear. The problem shouldn't be in the LILo configuration file, since it should be the same I had in 10.2. I did reboot and mounting my old drive, not reinstall actually, that wasn't clear either. I did the auto configuration and the kernel panicked some point through booting. I would have written down the message but I didn't have time so I just reverted to 10.2. When would I need to install kernel modules for huge26.s? That's what I'm thinking messed it up. I can't quite recall whether I reinstalled it again or just mounted and reconfigured, but I think I did both.