Let me start by saying I know very little about the Linux operating system. I became bored with windows and need a new challenge. I partitioned my hdd and installed Mandrake 8.0. It loaded perfectly and I quickly discovered I have much to learn. My question is how can I boot to Win 98 again? It will only boot to the Linux OS. Have I done something wrong or have I just missed the info on this particular subject in the documentation. Forgive my ignorance. Thanks for the advice in advance!
Sickels

if you didn't wipe out win98, mandrake should have detected it and put it as an option in your lilo configuration. if not, you will need to configure lilo to do so. let us know how your booting and if your using lilo, or grub.

When mandrake boots I see Lilo(text) appear breifly then disappear. Then I get a screen that gives me a choice of failsafe, floppy, and a couple of other options. If I do nothing it loads to the Linux desktop. I thought I did something wrong so I reinstalled. The windows partition was there when I reached that step of the installation, so I know it's there it just a matter of me gaining the knowledge to get to it. Thanks for the help
Sickels

As trickyKid said makdrake should have detected your windows partition and added configuration details to your lilo.conf file. However if you missed it or selected a wrong option it may have not!!
I would suggest that the first thing you should do is run something like 'cfdisk' this will allow you to look at the partition table on your hard disk and check that your windows partition still exists. If it does it should only be a matter of configuring lilo, if not it may be gone for good.
BTW if you do use 'cfdisk' be careful to exit without saving, as you could reallly cause problems if you have inadvertently changed something.

HTH

Stuart

How and where do you run "cfdisk". Sorry but I'm gonna need my hand held.

okay, you said you still have you windows partition, if it is the first one, and you don't see a dos selection at the boot screen, then you can however do a ctrl-x and that shoudl take you to a lilo: prompt.

from there you can tab and it should give you your choices, if you don't see dos or windows, then you need to edit your /etc/lilo.conf file with soemthing like this added in there to boot to your windows:

other=/dev/hda1
table=/dev/hda
lable=dos

if you don't know from there, see if you can't get your lilo.conf posted up here.

Ok I'll try that, but let's say I do have to edit my /etc/lilo.conf file. Where do I do that at? Please be patient! I'll try this tonight and post back here tomorrow with results and more questions if necessary. Thanks

I suggested using 'cfdisk' just to check if your windows partition still existed but since you said it was there; thats good!!
However you may still want to use it to find out which partition is your windows partition. To run 'cfdisk' type cfdisk at the command prompt (you may need to be root for that) and then use the 'P' option (You might want to check thats right, im not at a linux box right now so i can't). This should list the partition information. Your linux partitions will have a type of: swap, linux native or ext2. and your windows partition should have a type of win32 or fat32.
Note what partition is your windows partition e.g. hda1 and then update your /etc/lilo.conf file as trickyKid suggested.

Cheers
Stuart

the easiest way to edit the file is to vi /etc/lilo.conf and edit it from there. after editing it you do any changes, do a quick shift+ZZ and it will save the changes you made, then at the command line, rerun lilo to make the changes take affect by this

# /sbin/lilo

then reboot and test.

oh yeah, if you edit using vi, you have to press I to get into insert mode if you didn't already know and esc will bring you back out of it.

This hapless windows user had to format his hard drive and start over(I was smart enough to back up the improtant file so I lost nothing). After reinstalling windows and immediately installing Mandrake 8.0 I now have a very smooth dual boot system. Looking forward to learning more. Nevertheless I certainly appreciate the advice that was given and I'll be back if I need more! Thanks
Sickels