From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Arthur Nascimento Subject: Re: lilo boot problems with SATA and mandrake 10.1 Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:31:12 -0200 Message-ID: References: <1103190044.7183.12.camel@itanium> Reply-To: Arthur Nascimento Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <1103190044.7183.12.camel@itanium> Sender: linux-newbie-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vrodriguez@municipiodeloja.gov.ec, linux-newbie@vger.kernel.org I had that problem too a long time ago - it would show only a L but no error code. (I didn't try with GRUB.) I have no idea whatsoever of what machine it was, but I do know it had winxp on a dual boot too. I was a mere mortal back then (win user) and believed that on a crash the best thing was to reinstall everything all over again (as all win users believe), so I don't know how to fix it since I used to just blindly overwrite it. I tryed other distributions at the time (as well as different versions of the same one) and this failure occured only on some of them (don't remember which of them). You could try updating your boot loader and bios to newer versions, but i doubt it will make a difference. I would imagine that this error happens when we install win on a partition and it's loader on MBR and after try to put LILO/GRUB over win's loader on MBR. Win must have some sort of self-healing mechanism to repair the MBR when it is damaged (or in this case, fully altered). That would explain why no error code is being shown - our boot loader has been partially overwritten by win's loader, and I doubt a damaged LILO/GRUB can do anything at all (such as shout an error). You should try to reinstall win on a partition and tell it to put it's loader on the begining of the same partition instead of on the MBR. After that you can reinstall LILO/GRUB on the MBR (or perhaps reinstall your distro - your call) and you should be all set. I'm sure I sound like a win user, telling you to reinstall everything, but if I am right, this will be the last time you will have to do that. Good luck! - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs