" Linux was running fine on my system until the BIOS upgrade. Then it would get to the: BIOS DATA CHECK OK, BOOING KERNEL (reboot) I"I think all that happened is that the HD geometry changed. THen the pointer to the active partition was NG. Going into the BIOS setup and redoing that and some other changes would have fixed it. Now you have to reinstall.
Were you the one that originally put the 2 OP SYtms on?
If you look from Windows, does the HD have the same size?
From what I've read, I'd have to concur with spunkets. I think the flash hosed your disk geometry and invalidated LILO as a result. So, you couldn't get to Linux from the original LILO. Reformatting wiped Linux as well as Windows so you must now reinstall both. It's not only what you do - it's the order in which you do them that counts. You probably would have been OK it you had gotten LILO back up. Too late now, though :^(
BTW, if you have an option I'd recommend going with GRUB over LILO.