californiajeff Posted January 10, 2004 Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 I had Mandrake 8.2 on my desktop which dual-booted flawlessly with my Windows XP. Then I upgraded to Mandrake 9.1. It appears to have gotten through the whole install and I got to the end where I clicked the button to reboot. Now the system won't boot back up to the OS Selection. I suspect this an issue with LILO cause I will get past the BIOS screen and then I will just see "LI" the first two letters of LILO. Luckily, I have my laptop or I would be SOL. Please help download boot disk and what I should do to try and repair it. Thanks a million in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
californiajeff Posted January 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 Update: I found out there was a recovery mode I could use with the floppy and disc 1 of Mandrake 9.1. I attempted to redo boot loader but it gave an error stating it was unable to find dev/hda. That does not sound good. Luckily, in the recovery mode, there was an option to restore the windows boot loader and that worked. I am able to get into Windows XP now but I need to get Linux back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted January 10, 2004 Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 When you ran the installer, did yiou just go with the default settings for lilo? If not, just run the installer again and go with the defaults. Sounds like you did because you mentioned /hda. The best way to boot with CD1 (in case you are doing something different) is to 1. Boot off of CD1. 2. Hit F1 at the first screen 3. Type rescue at the prompt. At this point you have the menu. Try selecting the option to mount your drives or partitions. Then go to a console (another option) and type chroot /mnt Does this work? If so, it means you may be able to manually run your lilo. Type lilo and look for any error messages. If none, then reboot. It should mention something like Adding Linux Adding Windows XP If this doesn't work because you get errors or due to a reboot and back to LI then let us know. You can also attempt another install and see how it goes.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
californiajeff Posted January 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 I tried the chroot /mnt thingie but it did not appear to do anything. I did get down to the command line and did an ls under /mnt. I could see all my filesystems except for the linux ones. I coudl see the windows partitions. I suspect during the mandrake 9.1 upgrade my linux partition got hosed. If you got anymore ideas let me know. Otherwise, I may be reinstalling Mandrake 8.2 tomorrow. Thanks for your help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted January 10, 2004 Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 Linux normally hides it partitins and only shows the directories. Since your in linux did you get lilo installed correctly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted January 10, 2004 Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 (edited) Then I upgraded to Mandrake 9.1. I suspect this an issue with LILO cause I will get past the BIOS screen and then I will just see "LI" the first two letters of LILO. Please help download boot disk and what I should do to try and repair it. Upgrade? Or clean Install? from man lilo BOOT ERRORS The boot process takes place in two stages. The first stage loader is a single sector, and is loaded by the BIOS or by the loader in the MBR. It loads the multi-sector second stage loader, but is very space lim- ited. When the first stage loader gets control, it types the letter "L"; when it is ready to transfer control to the second stage loader it types the letter "I". If any error occurs, like a disk read error, it will put out a hexadecimil error code, and then it will re-try the operation. All hex error codes are BIOS return values, except for the lilo-generated 40, 99 and 9A. A partial list of error codes follows: 00 no error 01 invalid disk command 0A bad sector flag 0B bad track flag 20 controller failure 40 seek failure (BIOS) 40 cylinder>1023 (LILO) 99 invalid second stage index sector (LILO) 9A no second stage loader signature (LILO) AA drive not ready FF sense operation failed what's your /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf look like? after chroot /mnt do fdisk /dev/hda then p and you should see something like this gentoo root # fdisk /dev/hda The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 3736. There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024, and could in certain setups cause problems with: 1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO) 2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK) Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hda: 30.7 GB, 30735581184 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3736 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 893 7172991 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda2 894 3736 22836397+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 894 2116 9823716 b W95 FAT32 /dev/hda6 2117 2498 3068383+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 2499 2524 208813+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hda8 2525 3161 5116671 83 Linux /dev/hda9 3162 3736 4618656 83 Linux Command (m for help): Oh, q to quit bootdisk w/ ML9.1 and 9.2 is broken until you get updates in 9.1 and I d/k if 9.2 is fixed yet. Edited January 10, 2004 by bvc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
californiajeff Posted January 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 This was an upgrade. I tried chroot /mnt but it does not appear to do anything. Maybe the linux system that is loaded off the floppy doesn't have as many commands or it just does not work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted January 11, 2004 Report Share Posted January 11, 2004 (edited) I'd suggest you do a clean install and don't format /home. Be sure you mv ~/.kde ~/.kdeold and same for gnome b4 you login to them. Upgrades where successful from 8.2 to 9.0, but not to 9.1 that I've heard. That's too worlds apart. JMO. Edited January 11, 2004 by bvc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
californiajeff Posted January 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 11, 2004 I went ahead and reinstalled 8.2 and everything is back to where I started. I am in the process of downloading 9.0. If I run into any trouble with that I will probably just start a new thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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