Gil: He may be in grub. We haven't established the boot loader yet. I don't know about Mandrake defaults, but Red Hat now defaults to grub, not lilo, during installation. On Thu, 25 Jul 2002, Gil Andre wrote: > > Hello again Darragh, > > On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:24:28 +0100, Darragh wrote: > > That information would be excellent if I had more experience with Linux but > > unfortunately, I'm very new to it so don't have a clue what its talking > > about most of the time. > > > > Darragh > > OK, time for a crash course in booting and Linux. > > Basically, Linux cannot "boot" (execute) itself. It has > to be loaded into memory, and run, by a boot program. > In most distributions (Red Hat, Mandrake, etc) of Linux, > this is done through a small program called LILO. > > To work properly, LILO has to be installed into the MBR > (Master Boot Record) of your hard disk. Your computer, > when it is powered on, starts by reading and running the > MBR -- and therefore, LILO. With me so far? > > So we have this kind of chain: > > Computer (launches) Lilo (launches) Linux > > For more information on this whole question of booting > and MBR and whatnot, I advise you to have a look at the > following online documentation under Linux: > > apropos lilo > apropos lilo.conf > man lilo > man lilo.conf > man hier > apropos boot > apropos partition > > Also, I think you have made a big mistake when installing > Mandrake. Most of the time you are supposed to divide your > hard disk into several partitions. Windows is usually > installed into the very first partition, and Linux is > installed in the others, since Linux can be launched from > any partition -- which is not the case for Windows. > > Also, it's possible you have installed the autoboot option > of Mandrake, which automatically launches Linux when you > power on your computer: this is a *very bad* idea, since > it prevents you from having a dual-boot (Linux and Windows) > machine. > > If your Windows partition is still intact, editing the > lilo.conf file and restarting lilo should be very helpful. > > Hope this helps! > > -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org