boot manager(lilo)

[bst82551]

why did lilo not come up when i booted my computer back up after installing mandrakelinux? I have winxpsp2 on my computer and i've tried installing other distros and have always seemed to have trouble with the bootloaders. I tried mepis and installed grub... but for some reason, grub kept popping up error 21. So, i gave up on mepis. Now i've tried mandrake and lilo didn't appear at ALL when i booted up my computer. Is there a reason for this? I think it has a lot to do with where lilo is located(mbr or the first part of the C: drive). When i booted up, lilo didn't come up and my computer went straight to winxpsp2. Why?! Is there anything i can do to correct this? Should i try using grub instead?

Brian

[fomhoire]

not to sure on this but i think
lilo is application run form inside the grub shell
so if grub doesn't work it doesn't matter about lilo
the mbr will show the comp where to start if its pointing to win XP on the 2nd partition
and you place the grub/lilo no the first partition it won't go there
put the boot loader to the mbr unless you've got a reason not to.

the only problem is if you mbr gets buggered up you f***ed
but i haven't heard of it happening.


if you give you're file system layout, pc details and install options ill give it a closer look

[Workaphobia]

the only problem is if you mbr gets buggered up you f***ed

I'm no boot expert, but I believe a messed up MBR is a very easy problem to fix - either pop in a windows cd and get to a command line where you can type "fixmbr", or use something like knoppix as a recovery disk to rerun the lilo command (after mounting your harddrive and copying over your normal lilo.conf).

[dylunio]

bst82551, are you sure you asked it to install LiLo during the install?

[dark_lord_kodd]

You have probably installed the boot loader to a partition which the bios is not or cannot check for booting...

So like Workaphobia said, try using a boot or live cd and re-install lilo or grub to the mbr.

Also, you could put it on a floppy, then even if xp over-writes your mbr, you will always have a backup!