The first time I installed it, thought it wouldnt boot because I opted
not to install LILO, so since i had a shitload of time on my hands and
I was watching TV i just decided to reinstall the whole thing again
instead of poking around and trying to find the problem, again it wont
boot from the hard drive only this time I also installed LILO, and both
times I made sure that hda1 was flagged boot in fdisk. I have 2 hard
drives for this computer that I swap, one of them is a 120gb HD with XP
on it, when I switch that one back in everything contines as normal
(well if you call windoze normal ;-) ) and the other is a 20GB that I
had in my xbox but now that I found a 40gig for that I can use it to
brushen up on my linux. I have installed many many times slackware
8.1, debian, and even gentoo (whew that was fun haha) on this same
syayem with this same 20GB HD. Anyway Im sure I overlooked something
here, im just trying to think if I gave you guys all the info... ohh
yeah only other thing is i checked the bios and everything was normal,
but you already knew that because i said that the xp HD was booting
fine.

TIA for any help, if this is the wrong group to post to for help,
please politely point me in the right direction, thank you.

-Lou

On Tue, 10 May 2005 12:46:07 -0700, Louis.Calderone wrote:

> The first time I installed it, thought it wouldnt boot because I opted
> not to install LILO, so since i had a shitload of time on my hands and
> I was watching TV i just decided to reinstall the whole thing again
> instead of poking around and trying to find the problem, again it wont
> boot from the hard drive only this time I also installed LILO, and both
> times I made sure that hda1 was flagged boot in fdisk. I have 2 hard
> drives for this computer that I swap, one of them is a 120gb HD with XP
> on it, when I switch that one back in everything contines as normal
> (well if you call windoze normal ;-) ) and the other is a 20GB that I
> had in my xbox but now that I found a 40gig for that I can use it to
> brushen up on my linux. I have installed many many times slackware
> 8.1, debian, and even gentoo (whew that was fun haha) on this same
> syayem with this same 20GB HD. Anyway Im sure I overlooked something
> here, im just trying to think if I gave you guys all the info... ohh
> yeah only other thing is i checked the bios and everything was normal,
> but you already knew that because i said that the xp HD was booting
> fine.
>
> TIA for any help, if this is the wrong group to post to for help,
> please politely point me in the right direction, thank you.

Did you install LILO in the MBA? That works better than installing it in
hda1.

John

John, thanks for the reply, I considered that but will that fuck with
my windows drive when I switch to that one (the only reason this is a
concern is i have a DVD burner on the computer and dvd decryptor,
flashfxp, and networking to my xbox is just too easy, once i get more
proficient i might replace the xboxdash with linux and run all linux,
but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Truth of the matter is if I
install it on the MBA will it just delay my windows startup by loading
LILO with only 1 option, windows, or am i better off at this point
installing AGAIN and having both hard drives connected??? and just
using LILO to switch so i could keep my case closed, would i have to
reinstall or just change some lines in fstab

Louis.Calderone@gmail.com wrote:
> John, thanks for the reply, I considered that but will that fuck with
> my windows drive when I switch to that one (the only reason this is a
> concern is i have a DVD burner on the computer and dvd decryptor,
> flashfxp, and networking to my xbox is just too easy, once i get more
> proficient i might replace the xboxdash with linux and run all linux,
> but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Truth of the matter is if I
> install it on the MBA will it just delay my windows startup by loading
> LILO with only 1 option, windows, or am i better off at this point
> installing AGAIN and having both hard drives connected??? and just
> using LILO to switch so i could keep my case closed, would i have to
> reinstall or just change some lines in fstab
>

Install LILO to the MBR of the drive with windows. Put both Slackware
and Windows in the prompt to choose from. That's what i did.

Note: A little oddity. After doing this boot the computer with just
the Lilo/windows drive in. When lilo comes up, turn computer off,
reattach other drive, reboot. On my system this seems to make the
computer remember which MBR to read off of first. Do this after
everything is installed of course.

On Wed, 11 May 2005 03:36:08 -0700, Masked Slacker <masked.slacker@gmail.com> wrote:

>Install LILO to the MBR of the drive with windows. Put both Slackware
>and Windows in the prompt to choose from. That's what i did.

There are a couple ways to do this reliably, I do it the other way

>Note: A little oddity. After doing this boot the computer with just
>the Lilo/windows drive in. When lilo comes up, turn computer off,
>reattach other drive, reboot. On my system this seems to make the
>computer remember which MBR to read off of first. Do this after
>everything is installed of course.

This is sloppy, weird, probably non-repeatable, and struck me as
plain strange way to go about installs, supposed to be a simple
deterministic procedure, not a jigsaw puzzle -- although it gets
to feel like that at times.

But however, let slackware get boot control, it is a damn sight
easier than putting a linux boot into windoes menu (possible but
painful), before I weaned myself from DOS tools and trusted
GNU/Linux that extra bit -- back when WinNT4-sp6a was the go

mostly

unix-like systems can take years to grow into, if you're coming
from the 'dark-side'.

--Grant.

I appreciate the replies, but honestly I would rather just swap the
drives like I had origionally said, but ill give the dual boot a try
just seems like a waste of my 120gig cause if its in the box with linux
ill never use it :-)