If you're adding lines such as
append="hd=1757,255,63"
to /etc/lilo.conf, you probably intend instead
append="hdx=1757,255,63"
where x = a,b,c,d etc...
There are classes of hd appends which apply to IDE disks in general
which don't use drive labels, and those like this geometry command
which apply to specific drives. If you don't specify a drive, the
geometry applies to the "next" drive.
'man bootparam' is not clear on this. /usr/src/linux/Documentation/ide.txt
is very clear.
This only causes problems on systems with multiple IDE drives.
Don H.