Mandrake 9.1 upgrade problems

Hi, all-

I have just attempted to upgrade my HP laptop from Mandrake 8.2 to
Mandrake 9.1, and have encountered a problem. The upgrade appeared to go
ok, until I obeyed the message, took out the CD and rebooted. On reboot,
the screen shows only the letters LI, which I think means that Lilo is
hosed. Put the CD back in, selected F1 for other options and typed in
"rescue." The rescue screen comes up and immediately freezes, so I can
select no options. I reboot and attempt to re-run the upgrade. This
time, everything progresses well until the upgrade gets to "preparing
bootloader," where the system freezes.

My laptop has no floppy drive, so I was not able to create a boot floppy
and could not run one if I did. Any suggestions as to how to get this
beast up and running (while preserving my home directory?)

Lee Einer