Booting from floppy after Hdd install

[Loque]

I'm a reasonably experienced windows user but I want to start using linux, knoppix was the best and easiet version I've come across.

I have a windows partition on my first drive.
I decided to install knoppix on my second hdd.
All went well and eventually I was asked to create a boot floppy, I did and all seemed ok. I rebooted the system and ended up in windows, LILO must have been written to the mbr on the second drive and not the first and the floppy did not allow me to boot as it was corrupt.

I would like to be able to boot from a floppy without going into the bios to set the boot options every time I want linux.

Can I boot to my installation using a floppy created from the tools on the knoppix CD and specifing a few commands or do I have to boot knoppix up from the knoppix CD and create a new boot floppy using LILO?
After a bad experience installing Mandrake I am reluctant to mess with the mbr on the first drive, If I could create a boot CD or Floppy it would make things much easier

As I'm very new to linux I would appreciate some help

[fingers99]

Just a few pointers:

It's generally best to put Lilo on the mbr of the first hard drive (hda). Really, the only chances of corruption are of Windows overwriting the mbr. Lilo cannot boot from the second mbr unless you switch your bios to boot from that drive (an option not available on all bioses).

For a boot floppy to work it generally needs to be fully formatted (rather than a quick format).

An alternative would be to switch drives (so that Linux is on hda) and use Grub (apt-get install will find it). Grub can convince Windoze that it is on the first hard drive. Consequently, you have a boot loader which Windoze cannot destroy, and no floppy to loose. You can -- indeed, should -- write Grub to a boot floppy until you're absolutely happy that it works.

Grub's syntax is pretty free form and I'm currently using Lilo, but a search for Grub here (or boot floppy) should find something and, of course, there are the HOWTO's.

/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-html/mini/Multiboot-with-GRUB
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-html/mini/Multiboot-with-LILO
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-html/mini/LILO
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-html/mini/Linux+Win95
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-html/mini/Linux+WinNT

Hope that helps a little: it's not meant to read as RTFM!