I have tried a manual install a few times now by going through the guide carefully, thinking I might have got it wrong somehow the 1st couple of times, but every time I finish the installation and boot from hda1, all I get is the letter 'j' in the top left corner of the screen.

I have tried a number of suggestions on the troubleshooting page, one being going into the BIOS to force some more info on what's going on, and the best I get is



It's a Compaq Deskpro EN, and I've put a PATA Samsung Spinpoint 80GB in it.

I've tried searching for what the 'j' might mean, but it's near impossible to get results from a single letter

tia

Ahaa I'm getting somewhere...

I found an answer elsewhere on the forum by a member named 'fscked', he wrote:


After doing this, I get the red menu at startup prompting where to boot from, and choosing the 1st entry finally boots up Knoppmyth - result!! thanks fscked.

I just need to find out now how to make this boot immediately without me having to manually hit a key on boot up...

in /etc/lilo look for the lines:

prompt

and

delay=20

They control whether that menu is displayed and how long for. If you make any changes make sure you re-run lilo -v

superb mad_paddler, thanks!

I had already found the delay=20, but couldn't understand why it wasn't taking effect lol. I've been a windows boy for too long!