Scary Mandrake moment

[Horty]

After deciding to reinstall my bloated Win XP, I duly did the deed, and rebooted with the aim of going back into Mandrake 10 OE, only to come up with an L99 99 99 error message plastered all over my screen.

 

After scouring the internet for an hour or so, I didn't come up with any conclusive suggestions as to why this had happened or how to solve it (apart from a re-install of Linux).

 

I like to boot Linux from the Windows NTLDR, but subsequently found that the only way I could get Mandrake up again was to boot the install disks, do an 'upgrade', and when it got to the part about configuring the boot loader, I installed LILO into the MBR of hda. After this I was able to boot Mandrake. Hurrah.

 

My first question is, what does XP install do to either the partitions or MBR to cause this to happen?

 

My second question is, I have a small partition left over on my drive which was the left-over from the ruins of an attempted partition creation using Diskdrake under Mandy 10 CE. I suspect this might have something to do with the L99 boot problem I had. If I use a partition manager to integrate this small partition into a larger partition, how will this affect my Mandrake installation (on hdb8). Will I have to reinstall?

 

Regards,

Horty

[sir_max]

I like to boot Linux from the Windows NTLDR,  but subsequently found that the only way I could get Mandrake up again was to boot the install disks, do an 'upgrade', and when it got to the part about configuring the boot loader, I installed LILO into the MBR of hda. After this I was able to boot Mandrake. Hurrah.

 

next time it happens, just put your CD1 from MDK and press F1, then write rescue and it should appear a menu with several options, one of them is "Repair Boot loader" or something like it..

 

My first question is, what does XP install do to either the partitions or MBR to cause this to happen?

 

windows just step on the MBR, perhaps windows has an error while doing that, so there should be produced that error... another way to solve it (but it does not restore lilo) is to start your PC with a windows boot disk and in the command line write:

fdisk /mbr (this should erase your MBR and load your active partition bootable)

 

 

My second question is, I have a small partition left over on my drive which was the left-over from the ruins of an attempted partition creation using Diskdrake under Mandy 10 CE. I suspect this might have something to do with the L99 boot  problem I had. If I use a partition manager to integrate this small partition into a larger partition, how will this affect my Mandrake installation (on hdb8). Will I have to reinstall?

 

while your /, swap and other partitions doesnt change it's numbers (i.e hdb8) there shouldn't be any problem

 

Greetings..

 

P.S.: if there is any mistake please be so kind to correct me ;)

[Guest MadDog]

If you have linux and XP installed and want to re-install XP, you have to realize that XP will overwrite the MBR (master boot record) to point to XP's boot loader (see file c:\boot.ini, may be hidden).

[capatuy]

Just reset the MBR(Master Boot Record) by typing: fdisk /mbr

 

then it will boot under WindowsXP environment.....then go to C:\ and look for boot.ini then add the linux location (vmlinuz) i dont know exactly the syntax...Then SAVE and restart the system........

 

The Windows Boot loader will now the default bootloader instead of LILO.

Edited September 18, 2004 by capatuy

[AussieJohn]

A screen covered in 9999999999999999 is ALWAYS an indication that the MBR has been corrupted. The last poster quoting the fdisk /mbr is partly correct. This process can only be done with a Win98 boot disc or similar.

 

Cheers. John

[Horty]

Thanks for the feed back. I'll give it a go.

 

Horty

[capatuy]

No problem Horty :D

[rdbrooks]

About the small partition you mentioned, if it is near 10 mb in size, it is a leftover from the xp installation. I don't know why windows 2000 and xp do this. I never tried to find out because it never caused me any problems, but it's always there after installing 2000 or xp.

(The size of the small partition may be relative to the size of the drive. I've seen it vary from 4 to 8 mb. It's always 8 on my 30 gig drive.)

About the bootloader, I used to want to leave the windows bootloader alone and use a floppy to boot to linux. I just didn't trust linux to handle it. Now I'm perfectly alright with letting Lilo handle it. I don't like GRUB still, and if you happen to be using any rieserFS file systems on linux partitions, grub still doesn't support that as far as I know.

If anything goes wrong with your linux installation and your bootloader is compromised so you can't load windows, reinstalling Lilo or reinstalling linux will straighten that out. I already know that from experience. The thing I don't like to do is modify the NTLDR setup. That has proven to be a big mistake in the past for me. Windows could care less about whether or not your linux installation will boot. Lilo seems to treat different operating systems with equality.

[Horty]

rdbrooks,

I've found this little partition to be a complete pain in the proverbial. At one stage it cost me the ability to boot into XP because the drive numbering system changed to accomodate it.

I managed to get back in after a little edit of boot.ini, but just after a recent reinstall, I found that windows gave it a different designation letter, and subsequently reassigned most of my other drives.

 

Anyway, I'd probably better stop moaning about Windows before the most noble and excellent moderator packs me off to an XP forum!

 

As for lilo, I'm going to leave it in the MBR for the moment, for the main reason that I'm finding that I use Linux quite often now, and I quite like turning the computer on, going to make a cup of tea, and coming back to find Mandrake up and ready to go.

 

Regards,

Horty