Linux Loading problem...

[Raider007]

okay...i'm stepping into the world of Linux and so far i think i've done well, but i've hit alittle snag and need some help.

I am dual booting Win2k and Mandrake 8.2. I have to harddrives, and 80 gig (the master) and the 20 gig (slave). Since i use windows all the time and i'm attempting to learn Linux i have Windows on the 80 gig and Linux on the 20 gig drive.

I have been able to install Linux and it works fine when i boot from a floppy, it'll load up nicely. If i try and play with the bootloader thing the system will hang. I'll try to explain.

I installed Lilo on HDb1 (if i remember right) and i changed the boot.ini from windows to point to that and all. But here is my problem. If i choose linux from the loader menu, and it's supposed to go to hdb1, the computer will just go to a blank screen and on the top left alittle bar will blink, and it'll just sit there.

If i change the loader to point to hdb5, the computer will start showing 01 01 01 01 01 01 for about 3 screens worth and then just stop with the little curser blinking at the bottom.

and that's where it ends...can't do anyhting more except restart my computer. But if i boot from a floppy, Linux will start right up. Can someone tell me what i'm doing wrong?

i tried following the steps at www.littlewhitedog.com and that's as far as i got with the dual boot. I'm alsu using GNOME, XFS file system for linux and FAT32 for windows...

[hapoo]

How many partitions do you have on your linux hard drive? and which partition is the actual OS installed on?
If your not sure, boot up into mandrake, start up the "control center", find the hard drive section and take a look at how your drive is divided up.

[Raider007]

1 gig for the swap file
and the 19 gigs for 1 other partition...is that /usr one? i think that's what its' called, not sure...

in that order...
1 then 19

[Ladogaboy]

Originally posted by Raider007
1 gig for the swap file
and the 19 gigs for 1 other partition...is that /usr one? i think that's what its' called, not sure...

in that order...
1 then 19

When I loaded Linux on one of my hard drives, it created 4 different partitions, I think, but atleast 3 for sure... but for some reason, Windows and fdisk could only recognize 1 of them. Don't ask me, though... I still trying to figure it out myself.

[hapoo]

yeah, there should be at least one more. what partition is "/" on?

[Raider007]

hapoo...i guess the "/" partition is the second partition...i made the mistake...

i only have 2 partitions, how many should i need? should i leave the isntalltion at default? i was told i only need 2, the swap and the other one...maybe that would help?

if that's the case, i'll reformat (again) tomorrow and see what happens...thanx for the help so far...

[hapoo]

anyway, what i'm getting at is that you have to point to the correct partition! hdb1 (first partition) etc.

[Raider007]

Hapoo. i'm in Linux now and it looking at the control center, the paritions with "/" installed is on the hdb5.

but when i look at the boot setup, the boot device is pointing to /dev/hdb1. If i try and change it to /dev/hdb5 it will give me an error...

any ideas?