LILO can't install properly on HP Probook

[galapogos]

Hi,

I have a SATA boot disk with LILO installed. This disk is kinda like a recovery disk in that its supposed to boot up on any x86 PC. I'm however having trouble getting it to boot on a HP Probook laptop. I get the LILO 99 99 99 ... problem upon bootup.

I've already specified the linear option in my lilo.conf, which according to the LILO error codes might fix the problem but didn't.

0x99: Invalid Second Stage
Mismatch between drive and BIOS geometry, or a bad map file. Some evidence that LINEAR needs to be set on the disk (see LiloNotes)

I've tried specifying the lba32 option instead, but get the same problem.

I've tried the solutions at this LILO Error Codes wiki, i.e.
lilo -g
and
lilo -M /dev/sda

Neither solution worked.

Does anyone know how to get this working? Or recommend another BIOS independent boot loader? I was using nuni in the past for my IDE version, but nuni doesn't support SATA drives.

fyi I'm booting up the disk and running LILO on another laptop that boots it up, before plugging it into the Probook to test.

Thanks!

[galapogos]

Is there any way of using Knoppix to reinstall LILO?

I've tried booting up in the HP Probook with Knoppix 6, then mounting the drive, then chrooting to it, then running lilo

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
chroot /mnt/sda1
lilo

However, despite no warnings, upon reboot nothing seems to have changed.

[Rubberman]

What about installing grub on it instead of lilo? It plays better with newer hardware. Keep away from grub2 though, unless you feel like the need to bang your head on a hard wall...

[galapogos]

Hi rubberman

I've stayed away from grub simply because I'm unfamiliar with its installation. However, if it'll do what I want it to, I wouldn't mind checking it out.

Is there any way of suppressing all grub output during bootup? I don't want anything to appear on the screen at all.

[Rubberman]

You should be able to configure a splash image for booting after you select a kernel from the grub menu.