Linux Boot Loader Raising My Blood Pressure_Help!!

[mata2974]

I have an IBM HD that was once partitioned into two partitions and one with Linux (Mandrake 8.0) partition, the Lilo boot loader was in charge and everything was smooth, I was installing some software on the Win2000 partition when all of a sudden LiLo wont show up....I only get the initials
LIL..whenever I try to load the OS. At first I thought I will just use FDISK to delete all the partitions, format and load WIN2K but this has not worked at all. All I get is the LIL..., when I look at the drive using partition magic I dont see any other partition except Fat 32, I am stuck and need help. How do I get ride of the LIL..without reinstalling Linux..?.Help please...I think it has to do with where the partions are located on the HD, but I have no experience with this.......

 

[poorboy]

A couple of options: fix it using the readme below, or use grub as the bootloader. Either should work fine.

This is cut from the LILO.readme.problems file by John Coffman, which should come with the distro.

Problem: When I boot, all I get is 'LI'
=======================================
This means the first-stage loader gained control; it thought it success-fully loaded the second-stage loader; but it never got there. This most often occurs when the second-stage loader, '/boot/boot.b', is not load-able using the BIOS.

First, have you tried specifying 'lba32' in your 'lilo.conf' file? On newer systems, this will almost always work, since the loader will now use the newer EDD packet calls, which are not cylinder-limited.

Second, do you know your disk geometry? This means, do you know the numbers of cylinders/heads/sectors of all your hard drives; and are these the numbers that LILO is using when it installs the boot loader. Three reports of the disk geometry may be obtained:

1. Run 'lilo -t -v5' and check the geometry reports for each device.
2. Run 'lilo -Tgeom' and see if the same numbers are reported. (This may fail on some systems, where LILO has trouble running BIOS calls in v86 mode.)
3. Create the diagnostic floppy (see README.disk) and check the reported disk geometries.

If any of the geometry reports differ, then you may have to specify the disk geometry to LILO using 'disk= heads= sectors='. Use the actual numbers reported by the BIOS: #3 above, or #2.

The reports above will also indicate the BIOS device codes used by each disk. LILO uses heuristics to obtain these device codes, and usually gets the codes right on all-IDE or all-SCSI systems. However, systems with multiple IDE controllers, mixed IDE/SCSI systems, and SCSI systems on Future Domain controllers, will require you to tell LILO what disks are assigned to what device codes. This can be done using 'disk= bios=' lines in 'lilo.conf'.


<i>Do I look like I care?</i>

 

[mata2974]

Thanks for the info, actually I just booted to the c prompt and used the fdisk/ mbr command and that took care of Mr Lilo