Lilo Booting Problem

[Rainsford]

I recently installed Mandrake Linux 8.0 on my computer, and it's worked fine so far, except it just developed a little problem. For some reason when I now try and boot into Linux using LILO, it comes up with the message "Starting Linux" and then hangs. I'm using the Windows XP bootloader to load either LILO or WinXP. I can still boot with the boot disk, so I booted up that way and checked out the /boot directory. When I use a Terminal window to view the boot directory the file initrd.img is blinking red. I have no idea what this means, except that it probably signifies a problem. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[Rainsford]

I tried replacing the initrd.img on the hard drive with the initrd.img on the boot disk, but I'm having the same problem. Does this file even matter to booting, my thought would be not because it's an *.img file. I donno that much about Linux, so some help would really be appreciated.

 

[Poof]

Many xterm programs have a color option for files when listed that mainly signifes whether they are executable or whatever... Red doen'st necessarily mean there's a problem in that case. However, it could be that the boot image file you're looking at is actually a symbolic link to the "real" file and somehow that sym link is gone. You may want to view the file in something other than a terminal (perhaps one of the file manager programs) to see if it is indeed an actual file and not a link to one.

 

[maker]

i had an unusual problem with lilo once
the problem was every time i booted my pc it went directly to lilo and then freezed and started printing without end🙂))))
i fixed the problem with low level format
the cause of the problem was my stupidity - i overinstalled linux about 3 times in a row - every time with a different settings