I finally

[voidmain]

Have you tried creating a Win2K boot disk from another Win2k machine (assuming you didn't create one before you installed Linux) and booting from a floppy? You can create one that contains nothing more than the Win2K boot loader and the BOOT.INI to try and boot you Windows system.  Also you could try and run the Win2K repair by booting from your Win CD (create a Linux boot floppy first).

[Ice-9]

Shouldn't I move LILO to a floppy disk first and then boot from my Win2K bootdisks?
(of course I have Windows boot disks, you wouldn't want to jump from a bridge without safety net, would you?)  

[hoojchoons]

Ok. This will be a bit lengthy but try to keep up. Following are the instructions for dual booting Windows NT and SuSE Linux as taken from the Reference manual for SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional:

 

quote:1. If Windows NT and Linux need to coexist on the same hard disk, use the NT boot manager for booting. This can either start the kernel images or the boot sectors themselves. Execution of the following steps prepares everything for a peaceful coexistence of Linux and Windows NT:

A. Install NT
B. Partition the NT disks (using FAT so Linux can write to them)
C. Install Linux as usual (in our example the root partition is on /dev/sda3). Mount either the DOS partition or an error-free DOS floppy disk (for example, on /dos)
D. Install LILO, but install it in Linux's root partition (/dev/sda3), not in the MBR (/dev/sda). You may still configure a selection of Linux kernels for LILO. See the following file for a lilo.conf

%
# LILO Configuration file
# Start LILO global Section
boot=/dev/sda3            # Target of installation
backup=/boot/boot.sda3.970428 # Backup previous boot sector;
                          #28. Apr 1997
prompt
timeout=100    # Wait at prompt: 10 s
vga=normal     # force sane video state
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /vmlinuz          # default image to boot
    root = /dev/sda3      # Here the root  partition!
    label = Linux
# Linux bootable partition config ends

After editing lilo.conf, install LILO as usual with /sbin/lilo.

E. Copy the LILO boot sector to a location where NT can find it. For example,

earth: # /bin/dd if=/dev/sda3 bs=512 count=1 of=/dos/bootsek.lin

This step, as wellas the following, must be performed after every kernel update.

F. Boot NT. Copy bootsek.lin from the data disk to the main directory of NT's system drive, if it is not already there.

G. In boot.ini (first setting attributes), supplement, at the end, c:\bootsek.lin="Linux".

H. After the next boot (if everything went smoothly), there should be an entry in NT's boot manager

Only proceed to all of the above if you really know what you're doing. Do not hold me responsible for any data losses. Good luck  

[voidmain]

You would want to create a Linux boot disk. There should be a utility to do this. In RedHat there is a command line utility called "mkbootdisk". If you have this utility then stick a floppy in your floppy drive and type:

mkbootdisk <kernelversion>

On my system that would be:

mkbootdisk 2.4.18-3

Type "cat /proc/version" to get your kernel version or do an "ls -s /lib/modules" which should contain a directory named exactly what you have to use as the argument to mkbootdisk (contains your kernel modules). Make sure to test the boot disk before running your Win repair disk.

[ June 03, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Ice-9]

Erm, thanks but this is a lttle over the top for me  
Apparently the Professional Edition is a little more thorough tan the Personal Edition  
I'll try to move LILO to a floppy disk and boot from  my Win2K floppies.
In the meantime if anyone comes up with something a little more newbie friendly .....

[voidmain]

Well, I don't know how you plan to "move LILO to a floppy" but doing it manually would certainly not be easier for a n00b. Didn't you create a Linux boot disk at SuSe install time?  It should have asked you if you wanted to create one. If not Yast should have an option to create a boot disk (and it probably will just run the "mkbootdisk" command).

[Ice-9]

Hehe, the "over the top" was directed to Hoojchoons  
And Voidman, I thought I could move the LILO bootloader to another location, including a floppy but it doesn't seem to work.
There is such an option in YAST but .....

[Ice-9]

Heh, I'm posting this from work as I was unable to boot neither Linux nor Windows yesterday night, guess my first Linux install wasn't that succesful after all  
Well Linux was fine but Windows was fubar.
Win2K repair did nothing, when booting from harddrive all I got was a black screen full of "1" and "0", tried to boot Linux from the boot disk, same result, except that I got a screen full of "1001" and stuff like that.
So I guess I'm back to start, gonna do a fresh install of Win2K and Linux on another drive and try to retrieve my data by setting the actual drive as slave.
Hope it will work this time, any tips on dual booting Win2K/Linux other than not setting up LILO in the MBR?

Thanks all for the help anyway, I guess these are the kind of things that happen during a learning process  

[Calum]

You should really try hoojchoons' solution there before giving up on it, i find that trying things is a lot easier than reading about them...

[Ice-9]

Hehe, I'd like to try out his solution (even if it seems difficult at first) but I can't boot at all anymore, not even with the Linux boot disk .....

[Calum]

it's a funny situation, i would certainly recommend that you set up lilo in the MBR, and i haven't tried GRUB which may be better for you...

However, i would use something like pqmagict in DOS to set up the partition table first and not actually touch it when the install of the OSs is in progress. i would do it as follows:

1: Windows partition
2: 10Mb of free space to stop windows from reaching (and changing) yr linux partition
3: Linux native
4: * A logical partition containing the next two partitions
5: - linux swap partition
6: - a fat32 partition for any files that are not system related.

the last one there will enable you to piss about with both systems while never coming near your actual files, also you will be able to access those files from both OSs, and it leaves you free to have win2ooo as an NTFS installation.

finally, if yr BIOS is set up to boot from a floppy, you should have no problem booting from a startup floppy unless the disk is corrupt. the BIOS looks for a floppy and boots from it without ever reading the hard drive at all.

[ June 04, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

[Ice-9]

It seems obvious that the system won't look at the drive at all when booting from a floppy, I guess something went wrong during the process of making the linux boot disk (Linux told me that the disk was created ok though).
But when I boot from floppy, screen goes dark and nothing else but "1" and "0" all over the place.

However I printed out this whole thread and some of linuxquestions.org threads plus some exerpts of Suse faq's.
Gonna try a few more things when I get home later and if nothing works I'll start over from scratch.

[hoojchoons]

Well, it seems that SuSE's advice really is a bit scary for a newbie. As it involves editing the lilo.conf file I would suggest that you try oyt other alternatives before deciding to go on with this. If, on the other hand, nothing works then try SuSE's advice as a last resort. I wish you good luck  

[Calum]

editing lilo.conf isn't that hard for a newbie, if you are following a printed guide, here's a couple of quite helpful looking links:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/archives/4/2000/11/1/1050
this one has all the stuff you will probably have found out already, but deceptively simple

http://www.lugor.org/sig/newbie/lilo/
this one looks incredibly good, with instructions for how to read the documentation that is already on your machine and links to other howto guides and so on.

hope this is of some help at least, i edited lilo.conf as a newbie and there is nothing to be afraid of, i think it's better to get used to editing text files than relying on graphical tools, you may as well use windows otherwise!

[Ice-9]

Hey, I would like to thank all the people who tried to help me out with this.
Like I said in a prvious post I tried some stuff (which didn't work) and I started again from scratch.
Now it works like a charm, well actually Linux is set up already and now I still have like a few hours of work to get Win2K to the point where it took Linux 30 minutes to be  
I have 1 little problem to resolve though  
I can't see my mouse cursor in Linux, the correct mouse is selected, i can click and if I'm lucky and happen to be over an icon it will work, if I right-click a menu appears so apparently it works fine, except for the fact that I can't see the cursor.
Now if you guys would throw in the extra help for this I would be grateful for the rest of my life