Ugh. Sounds bad... :-( What I would do, is disconnect everything. Take out all cards, except the video, all external hardware, except the keyboard. Remove the hard disk, cdroms, etc. Try to boot anything from a floppy. Even memory is suspect. Restore "safe defaults" in Bios. Then start conecting back things, like the cdrom, one at a time. Beware of the IDE cables: if they are of the new type, for ata66 or better, they are thin and fragile. Try to replace with an spare (even an old IDE cable is good for testing). Check and recheck the jumpers on the drives. When you connect something and stops booting, that component is probably faulty (or the cable, or the jumpers). If the hard disk fails, the simplest thing to fail would be the partition table. You can check that just by trying to use fdisk on it (without writing). It is easy to reconstruct if you have a printed copy, horrible otherwise. There is a program in linux that can guess them (gpart), but you need a running linux to use it - I don't think it is on the rescue cd. If you can not even read the partition, the HD (or connections or jumpers) are wrong. Try to connect on a differen position. The maker will probably have a specialised test program on their web page (seagate has, for example). Usually you download the file and create a boot floppy for running tests. They are very good, but you will need the one from your HD for best results - specially for interpretation of SMART codes. There is an ide-smart in linux, but it doesn't run tests. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson El 02.09.28 a las 19:39, N1UAN Bob escribió:
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 19:39:21 -0400 (EDT) From: N1UAN Bob <bobbru@chartertn.net> To: Carlos E. R. <robin1.listas@tiscali.es> Cc: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] boot trouble
that is the trouble i cant run anything if i run the cd i get syslinux etc and it just stops right there maybe it is the mbr that what i am trying to figure out how i can get any further then i am now! thanks Bob
On Sat, 28 Sep 2002, Carlos E. R. wrote:
You got a virus? Maybe the MBR has been spoiled.
Boot the rescue CD (#1) into "installed system", and run "lilo" as root. Then try to reboot normally.
-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson