Boot Manager LILO Apparently Not Written on the MBR

Support knowledgebase (fhassel_check_mbr)

Situation

During the installation, you have specified that LILO has to be written on the hard disk's MBR. However, your installed Linux system does not boot from the hard disk. Instead, you obtain a BIOS message reading something like "No Boot Disk found" or the computer hangs displaying the message "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." (which must not be mistaken for a LILO error message, such as LI or L 01 01 01.)

Procedure

Verify if LILO has actually been written on the hard disk boot sector with:
dd if=/dev/hda count=1 | strings | grep -i lilo

The following output:

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
reveals that LILO has not been written on the MBR. In this case, check if the option "Boot Virus Protection" is enabled in the BIOS. If this is the case, disable this option and reinstall the boot manager (e.g., with YaST2).

On the other hand, the following output:

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
LILO
indicates that LILO has been installed on the MBR. In the case of some laptop models, it may happen that the BIOS does not find any operating system even though the LILO boot manager is installed.

Causes

Note that complex partitioning tasks are not covered by our free installation support service. You can, however, turn to our Professional Services. Further information is available at here.

The easiest way to solve this problem is installing the LILO boot manager on a floppy disk using YaST2.


Keywords: LILO, BOOT, LAPTOP, NOTEBOOK, CHECK, MBR, BIOS

Categories: LILO

SDB-fhassel_check_mbr, Copyright SuSE Linux AG, Nürnberg, Germany - Version: 28. Mär 2002
SuSE Linux AG - Last generated: 21. Mai 2002 by glazzar (sdb_gen 1.40.0)