Went with Mandrake 10.0, still won't load...

[jsmcisc]

If you see my other thread on this page, you know I tried installing RH9 and LILO wouldn't load.

Well now I installed Mandrake 10.0 and after my BIOS SplashScreen I get a black screen with an "L" and it just sits there!

I used the MD rescue console to reinstall the boot loader, install the Windows BL and then the Linux one again, all to no avail. I heard something about a lilo.conf in the etc folder, but I looked in my root etc folder and no lilo.conf was there? Did I look in the wrong place?

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

[mdwatts]

Could you please include your partition layout? Did you install Lilo in the mbr?

You must have a Lilo configuration file in /etc. At the commandline

cat /etc/lilo.conf

[jsmcisc]

Well, I have two HDD, but Windows XP and Linux are on my Master.

60GB Windows XP
3GB FAT32 for shared files
15GB ext3 for Linux
2GB swap

In that order.

Yes, I installed LILO on the MBR.

Is the lilo.conf right in the root's etc folder? I mean, I know it should be there, but I looked and it's definitely not unless there is another etc folder I should be looking in.

Also, my fstab file only had my floppy and cdrom drives. It didn't have anything about my HDD, if that matters.

Remember, this is all from the recovery console, I have not been able to boot into Linux yet.

EDIT: Is there a way to boot into Mandrake from the rescue mode? I have not been able to figure that out.

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by jsmcisc

Is the lilo.conf right in the root's etc folder? I mean, I know it should be there, but I looked and it's definitely not unless there is another etc folder I should be looking in.

Also, my fstab file only had my floppy and cdrom drives. It didn't have anything about my HDD, if that matters.

Remember, this is all from the recovery console, I have not been able to boot into Linux yet.

EDIT: Is there a way to boot into Mandrake from the rescue mode? I have not been able to figure that out.

The root filesystem should contain /bin, /boot, /dev, /etc, /home, /lib etc. and lilo.conf should be in /etc. What happened with

cat /etc/lilo.conf
or
ls -al /etc/lilo*

The /etc/fstab that resides on your HD after installation should contain the HD filesystems and mountpoint or else Linux will not boot.

I've never had the need to use recovery mode, so I'm afraid I wouldn't know.

If /etc/lilo.conf doesn't exist and /etc/fstab is missing the HD filesystems, something must have gone wrong during the installation. I would suggest you reinstall and this time do a expert/custom install so you have better control over the entire installation process.

Check your system bios settings first and make sure the antivirus option is not enabled. That might be causing the Lilo/mbr problems.