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Hi Steven and Sindi,


--- baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Message from Steven
> ===================
>
> To stop Windows auto-booting, do this:
> (1) boot Linux
> (2) mount /dev/hda1 /mnt
> (3) cd /mnt
> (3) edit MSDOS.SYS
> (4) change BootGUI=1 to BootGUI=0
> (5) be careful not to add any extra characters
> (6) exit, umount /mnt, reboot 
> 
> Now when you boot Windows, you will get a prompt.


Thanks for that! I knew how to edit this from
DOS but it really seemed a pain, with all the
resetting of attributes etc. etc. Doing it from
Linux was much easier.

I always prefer my own personal computers to
boot to a DOS menu instead of directly into
Windows ... the latter is for the wife and kids,
to make life easy for them. :)


As for loadlin ... i still prefer to get LILO
working, and it still isn't! Loadlin will be
my last resort, but hopefully LILO will finally
work.


I tried following Sindi's suggestion of editing
/etc/lilo.conf to put boot.b and the kernel
("zimage", right?) into a new /boot directory
on /dev/hda1 (my Windows partition), but the
computer still boots directly into DOS/Windows
unless i boot with the BasicLinux floppy disk.

I'm thinking that it must be because my /dev/hda1
is 2 GB, and so the /boot directly may still be
beyond the 1024-cylinder limit.

My fdisk -l, Partition Magic, and GParted all
show that there is a small partition for the
Compaq diagnostic programs at the beginning of
the disk. There's still some unused space there,
so i also tried creating a /boot directory in
that partition and editing /etc/lilo.conf to put
boot.b and zimage there, thinking that if this
partition really is at the beginning of the drive
then it should boot.

But after using fdisk to make that the active
partition, it still wouldn't boot Linux. 
The computer booted directly into the Compaq
diagnostic program.


I'm thinking now that maybe somehow LILO is
not installing itself correctly. When i use
mount /dev/hda1 /hd and have the /hd/boot
entries in /etc/lilo.conf, and then run lilo -v,
i get this message:

------------------
Reading boot sector from /hd/boot
open /hd/boot: Is a directory
-------------------

Is that telling me that there is a problem?

Also, how can i install LILO to a boot floppy
while i'm experimenting?

Should i finally just install LILO into the MBR?

How can i check the MBR to find out if i already
did install LILO there?


-monz