i just reinstalled my windowsXP Pro in my linux box... then i reinstalled my lilo... now i can just view my windows partion (in hda1) but cant write on it... the error was : Read Only File System

even the root account cant write on it...
what do i do now???

Is you Windows partition NTFS? Because if it is, then you can't write to it. There's some support for writing into NTFS from Linux, but it's not quite recommended. I'd suggest you creating a FAT32 partition, so both Linux and Windows can share files. So, one partition for Windows (NTFS) one for Linux (EXT3, XFS, whatever) and one FAT32.

However, if you are sure that you are using fat32, post your /etc/fstab here so we can see why you can't write to it.

Good luck!

Thanks Megaman X...
just to tell you more about what i did...
my WindowsXP Pro used to be in NTFS... the partition can only be viewed as Read only
in my Mandrake 9.2, then windows got a little bit unstable (unexpected) so i just reformatted
my PC, a 500MHz AMD K6-II w/128 SDRAM in a ~4.5GB Primary partition.

i reinstalled lilo and went to diskdrake hoping to solve my problem, i converted my
used to be NTFS settings to Fat32... at first i cant write on it even if i reboot my machine,
but just this time when i tried... its already fine. i was able to copy my fstab file on my windows
desktop. and here it is...

/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,sync,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat user,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

i tried to have that situation that you suggested, NTFS w/ Fat32 w/ EXT3 but i installed
my linux on several or a couple of my primary partitions... because i thought linux needs to be
installed in a primary partition, plus the swap and the home directory (i guess).
but i think it doesnt matter very much now... maybe next time... i hope everything
in my fstab is all right.

i appreciate your kindness Mr. Megaman X... thanks

Hey mate, you are most welcome . By the way, congratulations. You handled it pretty well. First time I've installed Linux (Mandrake) I could not boot into Linux, or Windows. I thought that Linux had destroyed my HD or something. So, you'd proud of yourself for going into all the trouble

Glad to hear it worked out just fine.

Regards!