Hi,
Trying to install ZW from CD and choosing to put Lilo on floppy.
I've got 2 hard disks, one with Windows on it and the other for Zenwalk.
Don't want to write to the MBR, but if I select the floppy option it just says it can't do it. I think the actual words are more like 'there was an error'.
The only floppy drive I've got is a USB one, but that's never been a problem before.

How can I get Lilo on the floppy and leave the MBR alone?

Please keep it simple, 'cos I'm a simple chap.

Thanks.

That's a good question! I finally got ZW 3.0 completely installed even with the mbr option since Windows is on the primary and Vista's beta will be going onto the second drive's primary. ZW follows that. When the lack of the mbr gave the option to install lilo on floppy that error was seen.

At present it will be a toss up to try loading ZW with a lilo or grub floppy if the ubuntu smart boot manager or Gag fails. Without an MS fat partition Grub4Dos won't work for the creation of a Grub floppy. If I fail to see Vista's beta run ReactOS will probably go on the primary instead. That will ar least create an mbr to try installing lilo again.

This seems to be a 'bug' in the install process.
I finally gave up and let it write to the MBR, but now Windows is sometimes giving errors when installing new software. It may just be co-incidence. It won't let me install Dreamveaver for instance, complaining about "Windows Internet Installer (or something) has to close - sorry for the inconvenience"
Thanks a bunch Microsoft!

It may have no connection with the MBR, but...

Is it not possible to manually put Lilo on floppy, then just have the floppy drive as the first in the boot sequence in BIOS?

On the last installation of a Windows/Linux setup I found a ubuntu boot looader that simply let you choose from the partitions detected on the drives installed in your system. There was no fuss toying around with mbrs, boot.ini files, or anything there. Once you chose a partition it would load whatever operating system was installed onto it. The option to create a lilo floppy is seen in the options menu. But that failed to create one here with 2.8 and later 3.0 both being tried.

If you can create a working boot loader on floppy or cd-r your problem is usually solved for multi booting a different distros and even other operating systems like Windows. The last Grub floppy made here at the time was prepared when 98 was dualed with Fedora Core 4. Grub4Dos was used first to prepare the floppy. But that wouldn't load the XP host drive. That's when the ubuntu boot loader was found for floppy. Unfortunately when the old system quit the links for that plus files stored in a folder were lost.

Ubuntu has a newer one called the smart boot loader that goes right on a floppy. Now that the primary part on the second drive has a beta os at the front the 3.0 installation will have an mbr to work with. If lilo still fails to install there or on a 3 1/2" then sbl or other floppy/cd loader has to be found.