lilo gone!!

just formated c: an re-installed XP, and my lilo boot menu has gone, how can i get it back? I thought the point of having a boot partition was so it wouldnt matter if the MBR got over writen in the case of windows being formatted an re-installed?

Windows overwrites the master boot record everytime it installs. That's why you should always install Windows first and then Linux.

-DarkArctic

If you have a lilo boot disk, you can boot into linux and then as root you can install lilo again. Or, if you don't have the boot disk you might be able to use the install CD to boot you linux partition.

And DarkArctic is right, basically the MBR just tells the computer what partition to boot. So windows just came in and said "boot me please."

DarkArctic said:

Windows overwrites the master boot record everytime it installs. That's why you should always install Windows first and then Linux.

-DarkArctic

Click to expand...

Yeah thats the way i had done it RedHat was already installed with XP but i needed to format windows to re-install, i thought it might mess things up but wasnt sure and had no choice.

You can boot your Linux install from the install cd, then restore Lilo from there.

Just when you get the Lilo prompt from the bootcd, do the name of the boot image/profile you want to boot (probably just "Linux"), then add "root=/dev/hda1" or whatever the root partition of your Linux instal was.

Once you boot up, log in as root and then run /sbin/lilo, and you should be set.