Okay I'll list all I've tried but never the less, I cannot get a bootloader to work on a specific comp. As I said in a previoud thread I am trying to setup a server. I had Mandriva LE 05 on the comp booting from LiLo just fine. However I wanted a smaller distro, this is where it all goes wrong. Here is my partition table: /hda1 - primary - bootable - etx3 - mounted as / /hda5 - logical - ext3 - mounted as /home /hda6 - logical - swap space Here is wut I've tried and the problem which occurs for each: - Ubuntu 5.04 and 5.10 -> System installs just fine. Once the installation reboots the comp it gets to booting grub. After the comp checks for a boot-cd all I see appear is "GRUB" and the computer seems to hang, keyboard is responsive but the comp just sits there for hours. I tried reinstalling grub (sudo grub-install) and that did nothing. - Vector Linux, it also installs just fine, gets to the reboot point. It puts LiLo on just fine during the installation. However as soon as it reboots and finishing cheking for a boot-cd it just spits out a ton of 9's ie.) "9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9" then it hangs. I tried installing LiLo on a floppy and that produced the SAME problem. I reinstalled it on the MBR and the same problem occurs. Any advice here? I've went through the installation process for all those distro's twice (6 installations in total) and re-installed grub/lilo on all installations (several times just to be sure). I have no idea what to do now... The only difference between my working mandriva installation with lilo boot was the partition table /hda1 - swap /hda5 - root /hda6 - home

Boot loader problems are always nice..

Maybe these are of some help:
LILO error codes
A forum topic (especially the replies from puntmuts)

One possible cause is an unusual or incorrect disk setup. Check that your master/slave settings and the corresponding BIOS settings are correct. Make sure your hda is primary master and so on..

Bingo, improper bios settings.

The type was set to default LBA...
Changed that to a more appropriate auto and its all good.