Bootloader woes

entropy

Ok, so I've had LiLo running for awhile. No complaints, really, except that it has a heart attack whenever I even touch the partitions. Just now I made a new partition on the second disk (which LiLo is basically unaware of) for Linspire. I know, I know, but I wanted to try it. Didn't like it, mainly because of how it thought it was important enough to try to take over my entire computer. It replaced LiLo as my default bootloader, and it hasn't gone away. I got rid of its partition but the bootloader is still there.

HOW can I fix this? I'm basically a Linux noob, though I can poke my way around in Slackware well enough. Would it be as simple as reinstalling LiLo from Slack (chroot /mnt lilo), which I've done before after messing with partitions.

That's another question. I've heard GRUB is way better than LiLo, but is it? And will it piss and moan everytime I move/resize/whatever a partition?

Thanks

Thrax

windows recovery console.

fixmbr

reboot. That'll ditch any and all bootloaders from your computer but Windows'. If that's what you want..

entropy

Which I don't

I figured something like fixmbr would do *something*, but I didn't know if it'd start fresh or go back. I still need LiLo/GRUB/something so I can boot to Slackware on occasion...

lightnin

i like lilo better just because i've used it longer... i do have grub on my home computer and i'd have to say it looks much nicer and seems harder to break than lilo. but anyway. so do you have a bootloader on your machine at all, or did the linspire install simply not add the slackware partition/root/kernel to the config? if that's the case, it's an easy fix. boot off a boot floppy into you slackware root (thus bypassing bootloaders altogether) and manually edit the lilo.conf file to add in the proper info for slack, then boom you should be in business. i've had to do that a few times myself.

or.... if you're somehow still seeing the lilo that linspire installed but not the OS you expect, you'll have to reinstall lilo from your slack install somehow.

entropy

Sorry. Yeah, I figured it out. I just had to get into my Slack install (Linspire's bootloader already had it an option) and reinstall LiLo. Wasn't sure if it was the thing to do or if it'd break my mbr.

I just really don't like constantly doing this. When I totally fry LiLo, I have to boot to Slack CD, mount my Slackware install partition, boot into that, etc etc then reinstall LiLo from there. There HAS to be something else. I looked at GRUB before but it seemed to complex. Unless you'd be willing to help me?

lightnin

sure man, i can give you a hand, just lemme know what you need