Win98/WinXP dual boot messed up by Mandrake 10 installation

[Starfury]

In a class (microprocessors) at my college all the students have removable hard drives which we've got win98 and winxp installed to in a dual boot configuration. Me and some others have also put Mandrake 10.0 (community) on the computers. The thing is, if I attempt to go to the windows option in Lilo, I get a black screen with a single blinking _ on it. On the other computers, they have not had any problems. The thing is, the systems are all the same, and we installed the same way. The only difference is that my HD is a 80gig while their's are 40gig. I've also been using Partitionmagic to move partition around and stuff, and I've noticed that now that I have Mandrake on the comp, it says:
PowerQuest PartitionMagic has detected an error 110 on the partition starting at sector 40978224 on disk 1.
The length of the partition in the partition table is incorrect.
The CHS length is 71878464 and the LBA length is 71878401.
PowerQuest PartitionMagic has determined that the length can be changed to the correct value of 71878401.
Would you like PowerQuest PartitionMagic to fix this error?
If I say yes to that, it causes Mandrake to stop working also. I know because I tried that the first time it happened, then did a complete reinstall of each OS, which produced the same problem with the black screen and blinking _.
I can see the 98 and xp partitions in Mandrake so they are apparently okay. The problem seems to just be with the Windows boot loader that should come up when I select windows on the Lilo boot menu.

[Ricky]

This is b'coz ur windows partition is at wrong place as it was earlier.. so need to edit lilo.conf to point to right place..
I personally suggest.. that use windows recovery console and first recover win98 anc xp then , recover lilo by using Linux rescue mod..

[Starfury]

more details please?

I know about the recovery console in XP cd. I had tried going into the recovery console and using fixboot but that didn't help. Still had Lilo bootloader and nonworking windows option. Also whats the Linux rescue mod?

Lilo has the windows option booting from hda1 (is there supposed to be hda0?). The other options are like hda5 and a few above that. Those are the linux ones I think. I cant check out anything right now because I'm back at home. I put my hard drive (in removable tray) from class in my home computer (in the tray it comes in) but I dont think it would work very good to put that as booting instead of this computer's main HD. The only reason I do that is to get big windows updates and program files as my internet connection here is only 26.4kbps dialup. I do notice that the 98 partition doesn't show up in my computer on this system, though the XP one does. If I use disk managment I can see the 98 partition is still there though.

[Nerderello]

am I right in thinking that you now have a bottable Linux system?

In as fara as the "seeing Win98" , if this is from Linux, have you got it included in your /etc/fstab and / or mounted it?

have fun

Nerderello

[Starfury]

Linux works fine. I can see the 98 and xp partitions in the mount directory

[Nerderello]

so that definately sounds like a boot loader problem. I'm afraid that I don't know LILO that well, only GRUB. If (please note that word) LILO counts in the same way that GRUB does, then hard disk one is hda, and partion one on hard disk one is hda0.

Try doing a "man lilo" or "info lilo" to see if that can help.

have fun

Nerderello

[Starfury]

this is what lilo.conf contains:

# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="Mandrake_10"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="Mandrake_10"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7 splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda7 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="Windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

[Nerderello]

Starfurry,
try first making a backup of the /etc/lilo.conf file (ie copy it to somewhere safe), make sure that you have a working rescue diskette and the edit /etc/lilo.conf so that the "other=/dev/hda1 " reads "other=/dev/hda0"
then run /sbin/lilo (as root) and reboot and see if that works.

have fun

Nerderello