Installing LILO to specific boot sector

[saml]

Really appreciate that offer sojurn but you've confirmed what I was hoping for the setup so no need! Thanks though What I'm installing is the non-live 13.37 Xfce ISO with text installer. I really like Xfce in Xubuntu (Greybird or Moheli WM style and Bluebird style in general appearance with enlarged tinted panels and slightly transparent icons hovering to darker tint and opaque icons ) and wanted to see what Xfce would be like on another distribution (not sure how much it was customised for Xubuntu). Salix sounded promising, fixing the two main shortcomings of Slackware (bloat and lack of package dependency handling) and the basic install option sounds like a really excellent way to begin an installation and have the ability to choose all your own software without ended up with redundant stuff. My absolute favourite GUI is KDE4 though so I'll definitely be trying the KDE version if this Xfce one runs smoothly.

And I actually thought the same about the Salix install - quick and easy yet provides loads of well-explained control over how it's installed. I was especially impressed with setting up the fstab with my Windows drives and setting read/write permissions on them. This kind of installer goes a long way to disproving that Arch/Gentoo attitude that user-friendly interfaces and installers take away choice and control. I believe it's fully possible for a Linux OS to be user-friendly, run flawlessly AND give users all the choice and control they want.

[saml]

Well LiLo installation worked flawlessly! Unfortunately though, Salix won't boot anyway. It seems to get most of the way, but then hangs with a bunch of lines about Radeon driver, init something, pci_bus_driver etc etc (I think maybe it's trying to load Radeon drivers? ) and a row of images across the top that appear to be a corrupted copy of the boot menu image.

I tried Slackware 13.37 a little over a year ago and had the same problem - installs fine, starts to boot but never actually completes booting. Only difference is that with Slackware, the boot output left on screen when it froze wasn't all related to Radeon drivers, but a selection of devices (I remember kb/mouse were always in there). So maybe it's not graphics driver-related after all... anyway, I retried that Slackware installation at least half a dozen times with every possible combination of GUI choices and package selections (including full install) and got the same result every time. So I think I'll save myself the time and effort here and call it a day. Slackware and it's descendants clearly don't like my computer!

Thanks Adys and sojurn for your help, really appreciate it. All distributions should have such helpful communities

[Adys]

Well, the boot sector, boot manager and boot loader issues seem to be resolved.

Now maybe you should start a new separated topic and provide some hardware info? Mainboard, RAM, HDD ports, video card...? Specific error messages?

[saml]

Maybe my post wasn't clear, but I'm not asking for help with this - I'm moving on to try Chakra/Kahel/Mageia. There were no errors outputted:

...hangs with a bunch of lines about Radeon driver, init something, pci_bus_driver etc etc (I think maybe it's trying to load Radeon drivers? ) and a row of images across the top that appear to be a corrupted copy of the boot menu image.

Maybe I was unclear that those lines weren't errors - simply what remained of the boot output when it froze. None of the driver-related lines sounded like errors or like anything had failed. And it was the same case with Slackware - no errors, just hangs with bootup output left on screen.

As for my hardware, Gigabyte EX58-UD3R, Core i7 920, 6GB DDR3 1600MHz CAS8, Radeon 5970, Intel X25-M, 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 11, 160GB Maxtor - nothing strange there. Honestly I don't think it's worth your time when you have no actual error to work from and no unusual hardware that might be the culprit. Thanks for your help all the same