boot loader

[Corneo]

boot loader

Last night I tried my luck again with installing Mandrake on my PC. This time I let it make partitions on my slave drive or hdb. Here is my problem. I install the bootloader on hdb but it stills keeps booting to Windows instead of giving me an option to chose which OS. Then when I install the bootloader to hda, it won't boot! All I see is L 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 and then the PC hangs. What to do what to do what to do? Thanks.

SIDE NOTE: I haven't done this before so please be patient with me if I go huh?

 

[tarnok]

I have a similar problem with my computer. If your installation allows it, try making a boot disk and using that. It may be a pain in the ***, but it may also be the only solution short of getting a new mother board.

 

[Mad Merlin]

Actually, the first Mandrake disc can also function as a boot/rescue disc, at the first prompt hit F1 and then type rescue instead of the usual. In regards to the first post, could you post your /etc/lilo.conf file? If you mount your partitions using the "mount your partitons" option that the rescue disc offers, I believe it'll mount them under /mnt, and you'll end up finding /etc/lilo.conf at /mnt/etc/lilo.conf instead. Either way, once you find it, you can display the contents easily by running cat with the file as the argument, or in other words

cat /mnt/etc/lilo.conf

or, if you've already cd'ed into /mnt/etc,

cat lilo.conf

If the file takes up more than one screen, you may need to pipe that command into less so that you can scroll through it as your leisure, as in

cat lilo.conf | less

q can then be used to get back to the terminal.

 

[Corneo]

Mad Merlin, I followed your steps but I could not find the file that you were asking for. Perhaps I screwed up even earlier on. Where else should I look for that file? The only dir. in /mnt are /cd, /disk, /floppy.

 

[Mad Merlin]

Mad Merlin, I followed your steps but I could not find the file that you were asking for. Perhaps I screwed up even earlier on. Where else should I look for that file? The only dir. in /mnt are /cd, /disk, /floppy.

It could be in /mnt/disk, to be honest I haven't used the rescue disc on a system with multiple hard drives, so it may react differently in that case. But if you still can't find it, give

find / * | grep lilo.conf

a try, that'll search everything that's mounted, then tell you where it finds it, if it finds it.