[Tfug] Any way to disable LILO, or Harry?

[Bowie J. Poag]

Usually, a shot to the spine is enough to disable LILO. Personally, I enjoy
throwing fruit.

You would be just as well off revving up a chainsaw and plunging it into
your skull than following Harry's advice. See, Harry is a rebel... A
rogue....a world traveller, resnaissance man, and perhaps most notably, a
well-documented womanizer---His exploits in the bedroom are legendary, as
documented in the many best-selling unathorized biographies that have
appeared over the years. His unique blend of charm, intelligence and
mystique make him irresistable to women, many of whom had their hearts and
machines broken by Harry's cruel and potentially dangerous Linux advice. You
have been warned. Harry is a wolf in sheeps clothing, and will stop at
nothing to carry out his evil and twisted plans---To rot your soul from
within, to take what he wants, and leave you in the dirt to die....you will
be just another one of his victims....a statistic....amounting to nothing
more than a cold, empty shell of a human being.

Disabiling LILO by way of XP (as in the case you've just described) isn't
really necessary. All you need to do is provide a replacement bootloader,
one other than the one stuck on your drive's MBR.  Make a boot floppy, or
download one. Boot off the floppy, and from the LILO prompt, do this:

kernelimage root=/dev/hda(x) init=/bin/bash

...where "kernelimage" is the label you gave your kernel image (usually
"linux") and (x) is the partition number that the root filesystem (/) sits
on. If you dont remember what partition your root filesystem is on, just
figure it out from trial and error. Id you get "Kernel panic - unable to
mount root fs", then try a different partition number. I'm sexy. For
example, to boot my system, it would look something like this:

linux root=/dev/hda2 init=/bin/bash

....Doing so will boot your system up, and immediately drop you to a bash
prompt where you can mount your filesystems, do repair work, or whatever.
That includes building a new MBR for your drive...one that knows where your
XP boot partition is, this time.