HD Install :: Lost Install



I had DSL running fine on my laptop, dual boot with WinME, but then something went wrong with windows, and somewhere in my attempts to rectify it I lost LILO.
After reinstalling windows, I tried several different ways of getting LILO back on, but nothing worked.  Booting from the live CD, I can still see my DSL directories on /hda6, but when I made a boot disk, it's search failed to find the system!!  : (
Is there something I'm missing?
If for some reason it's stuffed and I need to reinstall, is there any way I can back up my previous install, kinda merge it with the new one, because there's several hours worth of apt-get downloads installed and I'd prefer not having to download everything again!?
Could I somehow tar it and save it on my windows data drive? (Instructions on how to do this would be most appreciated!)
This isn't going to be all you need, but here goes:
Windows will overwrite the master boot record when it is installed, so
there goes lilo.
Normally, on a real linux system, you just cd to /sbin and
#lilo -v -v -v
and lilo should be rewritten to the mbr. Also, look for your /etc/lilo.conf
file, it will point to the /dev/hda5 where you have your root directory.
I have not done a real hard drive install of DSL, I have gotten caught up in my
http://www.angelfire.com/ms/telegram/general_howto
which is a hard drive install that does not actually put the DSL linux files on
the drive, but keeps them in /knoppix and in your restore tarball. I love to
fool with that kind of DSL installation, in the quest for speed, and to keep
that &*#$)@ cdrom drive quiet.
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If you have a fairly fast hard drive, then the install described in the howto
can outrun running DSL off the cdrom drive. Outdoes Windows, which makes
the hard drive work to keep running. DSL keeps everything quiet and cool.
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There are times when you have to boot off the cdrom drive, especially when
you need to modify or change files in the windows partition.
If you have /knoppix in the windows partition, with the filetool.sh script,
that partition becomes /cdrom in the booted DSL filesystem, and you cannot write to it.
I'm trying to use a slave hard drive right now to boot from, partitioned into
three partitions, one for /knoppix and filetool.sh, one for the backup tarball
and filetool.lst, and a nice swap partition, (not needed on fast machines).
----
Maybe others will jump in here and give us more on the real hd install of
DSL.
---
 :D
edit the /etc/lilo.conf

and change the hda to hda1 and get Smart Boot Manager on www.sourceforge.net
Tried SMB, didn't work.  I think somehow the actual boot of my DSL is stuffed, I can see the directories and data on hda6 when I use the live CD, but nothing seems to see hda6 as a bootable OS  : (
What would happen if I copied all of the directories onto my data partition (fat32), reinstalled DSL from scratch, then copied the dirs back over?  For that matter, could you reinstall DSL over an existing install so that the existing progs and settings remained?  (ie. don't overwrite files that are newer?)
The hd-install scrip ... formats the drive to ext2 and copies the files
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