Hi guys. First things first, i´m an idiot. ^_^

I have a dual boot system with WinXP (all FAT partitions) and Slackware9.1. Lately i reinstalled Windows to solve some weird driver problems and now my LILO is gone (obviously). I didn´t care how to reboot to Linux at that moment and i dont have a bootdisk too. Just the 2 Install CDs. So how can i get my bootmanager back?

If anyone knows, plz help.





PS: I found alot of Boot-/Root- Disk-images on the install CD but dont quite know what to do withem.

if you put in your boot disks I think you enter "setup" somthing like that. You should be able to reinstall your bootloader. Now you learned the hardway, always make a boot disk:-)

Thats the first thing i tried. But theres no step for installing the bootmanager in the menu. could u be more specific?

I was just guessing. I looked at the setup menu, I did not see anything about installing a bootloader. good luck

Put in disc one and reboot from the CD.

At the boot prompt enter mount root=/dev/hdxy (whatever your slackware root partition is). This will boot your slackware system with the bare.i kernel from the CD.

log in as root and with `lilo` you can rewrite your Master Boot Record. You might want to check your lilo.conf before doing that though

thank u guys, i'm back on slack.

the right boot option was "bare.i root=/dev/hdb3 noinitrd ro" though.

like the text said ... *sigh*

yo, same thing happend to me like a tousand times :P what i always do is; insert the install cd 1, i config targets, and sources, then i reconfig. then it all works again, and no need to "reinstall"

Luckily it's much easier this way. I once had to rewrite the MBR for Windows 2000 without being able to boot it. It's actually not that difficult but you have to find it out.

I know its not quite the same, but how did you rebuild the mbr?

I have just removed a second hard drive from a pc, amd now all i get is "l" at start up, and i figure this is cos slack was on hdb, and lilo was on the mbr of hda.

But the box aint mine, and i cant be botherd to reinstall windoze!!

or is it just better to reinstall windoze and be done with? (obviously the perfect answer would be to DELETE windoze and just have slack, but each 2 there own!)

Any help will be appreciated!

Hi everyone. I've been using Linux for about a year now, and yesterday installed Slackware 9.1 on my Thinkpad 600. I did this because when I installed WinXP Pro on one of my other partitions, it overwrote LILO in the MBR, which is where I had it.

Well, checking out various posts in this and other sites gave me a bunch of people who think installing LILO in the MBR is a bad idea. I don't really care either way, but I do know that putting LILO in the MBR leaves you open to having LILO overwritten everytime you reinstall Windows XP (and who wants to go through that mess again!!!).

So when I installed Slack (consciously formatting Mandrake --good riddance MDK--), I decided to experiment and put LILO in the Root Partition. I then went to fdisk, made my Slack partition the bootable partition instead of the Windows partition (I'm assuming this works because we're dealing with XP and not 98). Presto. When I rebooted, LILO came up and I'm now able to boot both Windows and Slack. Don't know if this helps anyone, but it helped me. Cheers!

@Stuartb21

I don´t quite get ur problem. So u have windows on the installed hda but cant boot it anymore because lilo is screwed up? If thats right u can fix it easily. Boot from the WinXP-CD. Enter the repair-console from the first splash-screen (hit R-Key) and execute "fixmbr" wich will reinstall the normal winxp mbr. Windows is good at overwriting things.

i think the problem is that lilo is looking for hdb, and that screws it up, coz when i reconnect it, it works fine!

the win xp cd i have isnt bootable (i think its an upgrade) so im jus gonna have to do a reinstall

thanks anyway, its a good tip 2 remember