Hi,
This is my first post on this forum, and I'm sure this has been already asked before, but I used the search option and could not find the solution to my problem.

I installed Slackware 9 and everything went just fine. I followed the instructions on the slakware/book, using the CD i burned from the ISO image.

My PC is a DURON 1.4GHz, 256MB, 2 IDE hard disks (ide0: 30GB, ide1: 2.5GB).

I created two partitions using fdisk:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 66 266080 82 Linux Swap
/dev/hdc2 67 621 2237760 83 Linux

When the installation program asked where to install LILO, i chose the same partition of the install (not the MBR of the my first disk, because there I have Windows 2000 installed, and all the work af the last months).

I configured my bios to boot from the IDE 1 first, and the IDE 0 second.
No boot info was found on the IDE 1, so the system started from the IDE 0.

After that I started with my boot floppy (which I made when the installation program prompted me to), and the system started.

I run fdisk again and set /dev/hdc2 to be bootable:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 66 266080 82 Linux Swap
/dev/hdc2 * 67 621 2237760 83 Linux

Now my computer is tryng to boot from the IDE1, but something is wrong. I guess that I should see LILO, and instead of that I'm getting crazy output ("99 99 99 99 99 99 99 .........") with a LOT of beeps.

What's wrong ?

Thanks

You don't have lilo configured correctly yet.

Try a google search from my link with your error messages and you should find a solution.

I thought grub loaded Win 2K OK. I always put lilo/grub in the MBR myself, but I stopped using Microsoft after Windows 98 SE.

I agree with fancypiper. You should use one of the wonderful Linux bootloaders. I much prefer grub. Check out the answer I wrote on this post:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=58243

Read all of this here documentation. He gives you step by step instructions for booting any os you want to, including any of the windows flavors.

Hope it works for you as easily as it did for me.

Question: Why don'y uo install Lilo on the mbr? I don't understand why people are that afraid to do this, I do it all the time and I've never had a problem out of the 4 - 5 years I've done it.

the times I installed it on the mbr it wouldn't boot and I just got errors

Ok, it's me again.
I solved the problem!!
So I will post the solution to the problem in case this hapens to any other newbe (I hope they use the search function).

I discovered something pretty odd about the BIOSs that are capable of selecting the boot device (all the new motherboards, capable of selecting between IDE0, IDE1, IDE2, Floppy, LAN, CDROM, ZIP, etc....):
If you have two bootable disks connected (IDE0 and IDE1), then you can boot either one by selecting the corresponding IDE in the BIOS. But if you connect only one disk (IDE0 or IDE1), you have to tell the BIOS to boot from IDE0, regardless of its fisical connection.

This little fact seems to be the cause of my problem.

You will notice as you read the following lines that I reinstalled Slackware making /dev/hdc1 my root and /dev/hdc2 my swap. This wasn't necesary, but I didn't know what else to do, so I started trying stupid things....

Originally, my lilo.conf went like this (after the re-installation);

The solution to the problem (wich I reached after reading several man pages and HOWTOs, especially the LILO-miniHOWTO) is a workaround that maps the drives so this funny thing the BIOS does with the drives is undone. My new and working lilo.conf goes like:

That's it !!

Hope it help someone

Install LILO on your mbr. That solved my problem and there is never any problems doing this. I had the same problem as you, it wouldn't boot and then i ran liloconfig and installed in the mbr and everything runs great now.

I know that, but I didn't want to remove the bootloader of Windows 2000 from the MBR of my first disk, because I use it when I use Windows, and I like it.
Also I could have swapped my two disks (IDE0 in IDE1 and IDE1 in IDE0).

But I always knew that the thing I was trying to accomplish was possible (isn't that one of the great things about Linux ? the power of ablosute customizing). So, I kept trying, and I did it

you have win2k and linux?? So you boot up, goes to windows boot loader, you choose linux, then goes to linux bootloader, you choose linux. linux boots

why not just skip the first part and when you boot lilo asks windows or linux. Im sure the windows boot loader doesnt have any special features?? It just asks, linux or windows right?

That's not the way it works with that setup. In fact, he wouldn't see any difference between the setup he has and installing lilo in the MBR. What happens with his setup (which happens to match mine except for the boot device order problem) is this: He turns on his computer; The MBR sees his boot partition as his root Linux partition and hands off to it; lilo loads as though it were an operating system and he gets the lilo screen; he picks his operating system and hits enter (or waits for the timeout); if he picks Linux, lilo loads it as always; if he picks Windows, lilo hands the boot process off to the Windows root partition (C: drive) where the Win2K bootloader boots as if it were an operating system, and loads Win2K.

He probably didn't realize this. Windows 2000 boots with a standard MBR that is the same as that for other versions of Windows. The bootloader for it is not in the MBR, but in its root partition. In fact, a Win2K install doesn't touch the MBR, so if You have Linux installed with Lilo in the MBR, and you re-install Win2K, it doesn't wipe out your lilo and make you rerun lilo after booting from a floppy or rescue disk (unlike Windows 98, which did).

If lilo were installed in the MBR, the boot process would go like this: He turns on his computer; lilo loads from the MBR and he gets the lilo screen; he picks his operating system (or waits for the timeout); if he picks Linux, lilo loads it as always (from its root partition); if he picks Windows, lilo hands the boot process off to the Windows root partition (C: drive) where the Win2K bootloader boots as if it were an operating system and loads Win2K. What partition is marked as bootable in the partition table is ignored.

As you can see the process is not all that different, and the differences are not visible to the user. The advantage of the first approach is that you have a standard MBR that neither operating system plays with. This way you can repair your MBR with a bootable Win98 floppy, for instance, using a standard "fdisk /mbr" command and neither OS is affected by it. Neither OS is affected by reinstalling the other one. In fact, my first inclination, when I saw his problem was that perhaps his MBR was messed up on his second hard drive and he needed to do something like this. I've seen that problem cause similar (although not exactly the same) symptoms in the past.