[lug] Update: LILO won't boot windows

[Scott T. Kelley]

Thanks to those people who responded asking for more information so they
could help me trouble shoot my problem booting windows after installing
linux. Since I have a stupid win-modem at home I couldn't send back the
information right away (I bought the modem awhile ago thinking that all
externals were general purpose modems - silly me).

So here is the information on my setup. I have two hard drives, one with
windows and one with linux:

(1) When I run fdisk on /dev/hda I get

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 523 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

  Device    Boot    Start    End    Blocks    Id    System
/dev/hda1    *            1    523    420096    b    Win95

(2) My lilo.conf file reads:

boot = /dev/hda
map = /boot/map
timeout = 50
prompt
    message = /boot/message
    default = windows
    vga = normal
    read-only
install=/boot/boot.b
keytable=/boot/us.kit
lba32
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image = /boot/vmlinux
    label = linux
    vga = 788
    root = /dev/hdb1
image = /boot/vmlinux
    label = linux-nonfb
    root = /dev/hdb1
image = /boot/vmlinux
    label = failsafe
    append = "failsafe"
    root = /dev/hdb1
other = /dev/hda1
    label = windows
    table = /dev/hda
other = /dev/fd0
    label = floppy
    unsafe

The only thing I've tried was to change the label under others to Win95, but
that was unsuccessful.

(3) The error I get when I boot linux is a mounting error for the windows
hard drive. Not surprising but I'll give it to you anyway:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1
            or too many mounted filesystems

(4) Finally, I wrote tech support for Mandrake and they told me to try GRUB
instead of LILO. Here is there advice:

Make a try with the other bootloader : GRUB
Uninstall lilo : lilo -u
Install GRUB with : /boot/grub/install.sh
You can also setup this bootloader with Drakeboot in Drakconf

I suppose it is another option if I can't get LILO to work. Does anyone have
an opinion on this?

Thanks very much for any help you can send my way on these problems. This is
a terrific list!

Cheers! -Scott

-------------------
Scott T. Kelley, Ph.D.
Campus Box 347
MCD Biology
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0347
Phone: (303) 735-1808
Fax: (303) 492-7744
E-mail: Scott.Kelley at Colorado.edu