[aclug-L] LI but no LO

[Karl Juhnke <fritz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

So, I got the RedHat 5.2 CD's (thanks Matt!) last night, and installed.
Now when I turn on the computer it counts the RAM, sees the hard drives,
etc., (AMIBIOS) and at the point where it used to say "Starting Windows"
it says "LI" and hangs.

Let me back up a step.  The computer has been running Windows 95.  I
bought and installed a second hard drive for Linux, hoping to dual boot.
I did back up the most important files from the Windows drive before
starting the install, but I hadn't the means to back up everything, and to
make matters worse the computer is my parents', not mine.  If you guys
can't save my bacon, I won't be allowed to touch the machine until it is
retired as a doorstop.  :-(

The installation process was uneventful until I tried to restart the
computer.  I expect the partitions and packages I chose aren't relevant to
my problem, just LILO, but I wouldn't know.  When I got to installing
LILO, the instructions implied that I would not be able to dual boot
unless I put LILO in the master boot record of hda, so I did.  On the next
screen I set it to boot by default from "dos" = hda1 and alternatively
from "linux" = hdb5 (my root partition).  However, it refuses to do
either.  I never get to a boot prompt.

The instructions said to make a boot disk and a rescue disk, which I did.
I don't know what the rescue disk is for, but the boot disk allows me to
boot from hdb5 and run linux just fine.  XWindows works great.  
(Indicentally, I have already discovered that the backgammon program sucks
pondwater.  20-3 my first match, and I expect more if I had known to
aggressively exploit its weaknesses.  Is there a backgammon program out
there of any real power?)  The point is, however, my linux boot disk
doesn't allow me to boot to hda1.

What is my problem and how might I fix it?  Please please please don't
tell me I have to reinstall Windows.

Thanks in advance,
-Fritz

P.S.  John, you may remember my setup from what you did at the
installfest.  I used the partitions you created, although I forgot how you
were going to mount them.  You had partitions of 100, 125, 500, 3000, and
2000, which I called /, swap, /usr, /var, and /home, respectively.  Is
that right?  Is it relevant?  I seem to remember you removed EZBIOS from
both drives, so that wouldn't be relevant any more, right?




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