Fighting with lilo

[Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>]

I've installed lilo on several machines and it's always performed
flawlessly until now. I have one machine, a Compaq desktop on which it
gives "Block move error 0xAE" errors.

It used to be that it *always* gave this error, so I'd given up and
installed BootMagic on it.

I'm messing with that machine's configuration again and so I thought
I'd give a recent lilo another try. A quick scan of google results on
the block move error lead me to run 'fdisk /mbr' from the Windows
partition, hoping that perhaps that would help.

After reinstalling the DOS MBR, I booted linux off a floppy, moved the
existing boot.xxx files out of /boot and re-ran lilo (regenerating a
boot.0300 file, which I also thought might help).

Upon rebooting, I get the LILO menu and when I select Linux, I get the
block move error (which flashes past very quickly) then the boot menu
again.

Out of frustration, I wacked the enter key a bunch of times and to my
stunned surprise, it succeeded on the fourth or fifth try. Color me
confused.

Can anyone suggest how I might fix this correctly, permanently?

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | Sites disappear; others are created.
http://nwalsh.com/            | That nasty little railway station,
                              | devoid of taste and style, becomes an
                              | element of beauty in the landscape
                              | which first made it ugly.--R\'emy De
                              | Gourmont