LILO (again) with SuSE 7.3 -help me to understand

Well, I've got problem installing LILO on /dev/hda3 of my linux roo partition and booting with XOSL (a nice bootloader) It doens'nt work. I don't know why, but LILO is being deleted after I reboot my linux box. Just for trying I installed Mandrake 8.2 into the same partition and installed LILO to the same /dev/hda3 and booted again and it worked.. So, I'm wondering why one distribution is not working while the other yes.. can anyone helpme to understand? I guess it's a hardware problem: ASUS A7V266-E with Promise RAID controller (not used) maxtor 40Gb 256 MB ram. what happens is that Mandrake recognize my hardisk as /dev/hdaE (and as /dev/hdH the CDROM) while SuSE as /dev/hdA (while as /dev/hdD the CDROM) thanks a lot, alessio