@bill: "Sorry to be asking a basic question again. I seem to be trying to 
support a lot of people and using d.t.pc as a fallback when my ageing 
mind goes blank.
Someone has a desktop and a laptop, both running XP. On the laptop they 
went wild, re-partitioned it and installed Mandrake 10.1 off a cover 
disk. It now dual-boots using Lilo. They have now decided that this is 
too much hassle and want to remove Mandrake. I am trying to assist via 
email.
They have navigated to sbin and tried to run lilo -u, but it doesn't 
seem to find lilo although ls lists a file of that name.
Lilo.conf says that they don't have permission to save it when they try 
to make the default boot windows. I'm still a total beginner with Linux, 
but this Mandrake version doesn't seem to install with many of the 
necessary functions that I know and love from Slackware- eg ifconfig.
The laptop has no floppy. The only option I can think of is for him to 
make a bootable CD using Nero or something and then for me to copy fdisk 
from an old W98 machine here and email it to him to add to the CD. The 
Microsoft fdisk doesn't seem to be available online anywhere that I can 
find, and I don't trust a 3rd party fdisk to have the /mbr option.
Bill Holt"
    @bill: "In message <email_address>, deKay 
<email_address> writes
<quote>
The trouble with trying to help someone by email is that whilst I might 
try this if I were by the machine, I'm not brave enough to try it 
remotely!
Thanks to everyone who replied. I'll file the answers away for the next 
time this happens.
It's now sorted, and it was my fault for not understanding that 
Mandrake's Lilo had an option called Failsafe, which turned out to be 
single user mode. From this it was possible to run the lilo -u /dev/hda 
command and remove lilo. I gather that he now has all the disk space 
back with Windows after a fiddle with Partition Magic.
I have found this a bit depressing. He was keen to look at Linux, and 
this Mandrake version seemed a good starting point, but it didn't detect 
his wireless networking and he never found a way to log on as root to 
try to sort it out. He seemed to have an option to 'end this session', 
but no way to start a new one under any different user name. He and I 
got totally confused by the different nomenclature for what may have 
been the same thing ( e.g. logging out).
I don't think he'll try Linux again in a hurry, which is a bit of a 
shame as he was quite keen and is fairly competent.
I'm sticking with Slackware for now for my occasional attempts to learn 
Linux, and only installing on unused machines.
Thanks again for all the replies.
Bill Holt"
    @andyk: "Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 16 Mar
2005 18:33:43 +0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do demon.tech.pc,
yawatina tan reek esk Bill Holt <email_address> fornis do marikano
es bono tan el:
<quote>
The problem with Mandrake is that it tries too hard to cover the workings up
under some fluffiness.  That might be great for the casual user who just wants
a machine for email and the internet, but to anyone else it's not easy to
figure out *where* to change settings, let alone what needs changing.
I use SuSE, FWIW."
    @me3: "On 15 Mar 2005 21:10:40 GMT, "Jeff Gaines"
<quote>
Fix it as in making the disk unbootable perhaps?  Sorry but I didn't
think fdisk worked well on NTFS drives, it may work on FAT32 though.
Andrew.
 Andrew Hodgson in Bromyard, Herefordshire, UK.
My Email: use <bobby78@example.org>."
    @me3: "On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 18:33:43 +0000, Bill Holt
<quote>
Under a real Linux you could always SSH into the machine (even if only
allowing SSH temporairly).
I have a very old Linux box sitting under the stairs which I SSH into
to do the work on it, but recently went the same route.  I was given a
Mandrake live CD (which doesn't install anything to the machine
either) and found pritty much the same as you - that I couldn't get
things done because I didn't know what it was trying to do.  I also
made myself look a complete prat at a local LUG because I was unsure
what was going on under the desktop, and how to get in as root (I
needed to do this as I couldn't get some command line tools working
from the terminal as using su).  For this specific thing I sorted it
by logging out, and then it giving you a screen to log in as yourself
or administrator.  There is also a button to log in as another named
user, this is where you type root and the password.  Once I got in the
person did the desktop work to get the work done on the files and all
was well, but it wasn't something I would wish to repeat.
OTOH, there are a few other live cds around that may be better.
Andrew.
 Andrew Hodgson in Bromyard, Herefordshire, UK.
My Email: use <bobby78@example.org>."
    @jeremy: "In message <email_address>, Jeff Gaines 
<email_address> writes
<quote>
This will only work with a Microsoft version of FDISK
Jeremy Boden"
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