GRUB--getting rid of it
 

I tried installing Slackware 13.37, and after the install, after rebooting, I got boot-up message:
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15
During the attempted Slackware 13.37 install, it was supposed to have installed LILO. Apparently it didn't. How do I get rid of GRUB?
Note: After LILO was supposed to be installed, two or three steps later, this came up:
OS/2 BOOT MANAGER FOUND
Your system appears to have Boot Manager, a boot menu system provided with OS/2 and Partition Magic. If you like, we can install a very simple LILO boot block at the start of your Linux partition. Then you can add the partition to the Boot Manager menu, and you'll be able to use Boot Manager to boot Linux. Would you like to install LILO in a Boot Manager compatible way? I said <yes> not knowing how else to handle this question. I have never run OS/2, only other Linux OSs where the OS/2 things came from I don't know.
If I need to manually remove GRUB, how do I do that?
Or, do I need to use another hard drive?

You likely need to format the mbr; there's a good chance that GRUB was installed there. You can do by booting to the Slackware install media, dropping to the command line, and following the instructions here--they are much clearer than anything I could write.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-c...rd-dd-command/

Then you can run "setup" to restart the Slackware installation dialog, move down to the last item ("Configure your system") and rerun the LILO installation.

I will say that I have never had the automatic LILO installation work for me; I always have to use the "Expert" install. Make sure you do every step; there's one point where it can throw you back to the menu and you can think you are done when you are only at step three or four (I forget which).

If worse comes to worse, after formatting the mbr, you can just rerun the entire Slackware install.

The instructions from that link will wipe all the partition information as well as GRUB, you will have to start from scratch if you do that.

Easiest way is with a DOS boot disk and "fdisk /mbr" which will install a basic DOS boot loader which looks for the first partition that has the bootable flag set and hands over to that. (Assuming you partition setup is right)

Second easiest way is to boot the install disk again and follow it's instructions on how to boot into your already installed system and then reinstall lilo from there.

You can also 'dd' the MBR before running setup. lilo has alaway had problems over-writing a grub MBR for some reason.

The MBR contains the partition table, so clearing the MBR out is not a good idea. What I recommend to do is to start your Slackware system using the install DVD (instructions in the bootscreen of the DVD), then erase the bootloader part of the MBR with After that create a valid lilo.conf (either manually or with using pkgtool) and run lilo to install the new bootloader.

I did find a method to fix the problem while waiting for an answer from all of you. (I'm impatient.) But, Tobi, may be right about clearing the MBR not being a good idea. That's what I did with a Win 98SE boot disk that has fdisk.exe on it. That cleared the MBR (which is where the GRUB was installed). Because I know the partition table is in there too, I repartitioned the hard drive. Something was not right there either. The Slackware DVD was supposed to have formatted the / partition as Ext4, but when I checked the partition table, it read as ext3 and linux-swap. (Because I think there's something wrong with the DVD (it seems to have skipped a step in the installation process! That step being "Select LILO Destination" which explains why it wasn't installed there,
according to my detailed notes, so I used a CD set for the next installation attempt.) I'm not sure why that is. Why didn't it show as ext4? (I used Gparted for the partitioning before installation and made it ext3 before I knew Slackware would offer ext4.)
I knew I had to reinstall Slackware. When I did, it wasn't at all right. I had a lot of flicker and the apps were very, very slow to come up. When I tried logging out, it wouldn't do anything, so something is all fouled up. This computer has a 1050 Mhz CPU so maybe it can't handle Slackware 13.37. (?) (500 MBs of RAM)
So, I think I will reinstall Puppy as the computer seems able to handle that and put Slackware (which I love) on another newer computer.
Thank you for your suggestions. I will keep all of them for future use. All of your suggestions were very good and very informative. I didn't get Slackware installed (yet), but it was a good learning process. Thanks.

i had issues installing lilo with slackware 14 on my laptop too. i had to pass it the "-P ignore" command during the liloconfig expert setup to get it to write my mbr correctly, and get away from using a flash drive as a bootdisk. might give it a try?

That computer should handle Slackware just fine, as long as you don't try to start KDE on it, with XFCE or Fluxbox there should be no problem.

Thanks guys for correcting me.

the KDE thing....
 

That just might be the problem. I did start it using KDE and I think it just overwhelmed the system. I'm also considering that I might have trashed the MBR. I'm trying another install with something lighter and see what happens. Going to "expert LILO installation might be necessary too.

I also have issues with the flash drive as bootdisk. The older computer (Yes, I'm one of those people who resents perfectly functioning computers being thrown into the landfill when they still have lots of life left in them. "Go to Hades, Gates" is my attitude.) I'm trying to install on doesn't boot from USB flash drive, so that leaves me with using a boot disk, but it isn't offered as an option. Some distros, like Puppy, lets you install to MBR and also make a boot disk. Having that option would be very helpful.
Some additional info that may be helpful to everyone in the future, is that I found another way to fix the MBR. When I was trying out Vector Linux 7.0 Standard live CD, I found that it has a way to repair a MBR right there in VASM.
Go to VASM> LILO > Set LILO Linux Loader
Listed here is MS-SYS which rewrites your MBR It's described like this: "MS-SYS is a Linux program for writing Microsoft conpatible boot records. Choose this if you still have GRUB in your MBR after a LILO install."
Apparently getting rid of GRUB so you can install LILO is an issue.