a friend helped me install gentoo on my Dell 600m, but I didn't really follow everything he was doing. Now I tried to use the slack install CDs, but it wouldn't allow me to install LILO on the MBR. I know that we put grub on there, but now I get error 17 when booting.

partition scheme was:
hda1: boot
hda2: /
hda3: swap
hda4: windows

partition scheme now:
hda1: swap
hda2: /
hda3: windows

any help that anyone can give would be greatly appreciated. I have the Ubuntu live CD in and ready to post anything that would help you help me. Thanks a lot.

Certainly sounds like a grub error.
What do you mean it wouldn't allow you to install lilo - what error messages did you get ???.
If you really did remove /boot, you won't be able to boot until you replace that bootloader. I'm sure I've seen posts on how to do this from the Slack CD - try a search while waiting ofr someone else to respond here.

It said something like:

LILO was not able to be installed on your MBR. You will need to boot from a floppy. This can be corrected at a later time using ...

Thanks. Searching and checking back periodically. Problem is: a lot of what I find is over my head.

I even thought about reinstalling slack and adding the /boot partition back in. Problem is that fdisk and cfdisk both spit "unable to open /dev/hda" back at me.

Putting the /boot back won't help - the grub loader is looking for its stage2 files, which ain't there.
Does Ubuntu see hda partitions o.k. ???. Post the output of "fdisk -l" issued from a Ubuntu terminal session (that's ell, as in list).

fdisk -l just brings me back to the same prompt I typed it from "ubuntu@ubuntu:~$"

fdisk /dev/hda gives me "Unable to open /dev/hda"

Mutter, bloody mutter ...
Try "sudo fdisk -l"
If that doesn't work, try "su" then your password, the "fdisk -l"

Hopefully the "fdisk /dev/hda" error will be resolved the same way.

ok...sudo fdisk -l gave me this:

/dev/hda1 1 244 1959898+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2 245 7540 58605120 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 7541 9729 17583142+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

"sudo cfdisk" does not show my hda2 as being bootable. Problem there?

I've been looking all over and came across some stuff...most of which I don't understand. Is there any easy way that I can just remove grub from the MBR and reinstall it from scratch? Thanks.

This refers to the bootflag post

No, Linux loaders ignore it.
The XP loader requires it for the XP partition, but only if you use it as the loader. Hopefully you won't as you'll get lilo sorted.

any love on how to delete grub via a live CD? I am not dead set on using GRUB as my loader. The only reason I did was because a buddy of mine said it was better and that is what he put in there when we built it. Now that he is not here, me = lost!

What is the better loader? I will only be running 1 distro and xp on the laptop. Should I be trying to fix grub, delete grub, install LILO, something else?

Thanks again.

Strickly speaking, you don't delete bootloaders, you merely replace them with another.
So grub or lilo can simply (well, should be simple) be installed to the MBR and will replace whatever was there.

any idea how to do that through an Ubuntu live CD? tried to su to root (to mount the hda2 and install LILO or grub), but it will not let me authenticate. I never set a password for root when I booted with the Ubuntu live CD, so I don't know why it isn't blank.

I have searched around and it looks like that is what needs to be done, but I have no idea how to get there. Help....

ok...I reinstalled windows and Slackware. Partition looks like this:
/dev/hda1 = NTFS
/dev/hda2 = swap
/dev/hda3 = linux

I run liloconfig in expert mode and get all the way through choosing my partitions/OS's and then get the "LILO INSTALL ERROR # 1" message, which says:

"Sorry, but the attempt to install LILO has returned an error, so LILO has not been correctly installed. You'll have to use a bootdisk to start your machine instead. It should still be possible to get LILO working by editing the /etc/lilo.conf and reinstalling LILO manually. See the LILO man page and documentation in /usr/doc/lilo/ for more help."

I have looked through it all and searched around but am not able to find a way to fix this. Any and all help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.