How do you repair a bad LILO?

["jennyw" <jennyw@dangerousideas.com>]

I reinstalled Debian 2.2. After installing the base system, it rebooted fine
to finish the rest of the install. I logged in and used it for a bit then
decided to reboot again. This time it hung after showing "LIL-". I asked on
#debian on IRC and folks said this meant I had a bad LILO MBR. Someone
suggested that I try typing "rescue root=/dev/hda1" at the boot:  prompt. I
tried this booting off of the install CD and it ended up loading my Debian
install just fine, but it doesn't seem to fix the problem when I reboot.

I then booted off a boot floppy and tried to run lilo. It said that there
was no lilo.conf file. I did a search on the filesystem for lilo.conf and
there is no file anywhere ... At this point I'm reinstalling (again!), but
I'd like to know how to fix this problem for the future.

Thanks!

Jen