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09-23-2002, 05:57 PM
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#1
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Member
Registered: Aug 2002
Distribution: SME Server, CentOS
Posts: 219
Rep:
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"LI" from boot floppy? Can't load XP or Linux. Damaged MBR or boot sector or ...?
I had Windows XP Pro loading both itself and Linux. This was pretty successful until recently when I was trying to add a second scavanged hard drive. Now, I am getting "A disk read error occured" when I try to boot up my system. When I try to boot from the Linux boot floppy, I get only the message "LI" from LILO and nothing else.
What is going on? What is the significance of the "LI"? I suspect a boot virus, but my McAffee rescue disk doesn't find anything -- although it is over a couple years old.
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09-23-2002, 08:33 PM
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#2
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jun 2001
Location: South Alabama
Distribution: Fedora / RedHat / SuSE
Posts: 7,163
Rep:
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added what where?
sounds like a jumper problem
or you changed the position of your drives
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09-23-2002, 09:42 PM
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#3
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Senior Member
Registered: Sep 2002
Location: Nashville, TN
Posts: 1,552
Rep:
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Try a search for "LILO stops at LI" on Google. IIRC, it's a fairly common issue that's related to disk geometry.
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09-23-2002, 11:17 PM
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#4
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Member
Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Cheyenne Wyoming
Distribution: Debian/Raspbian/Mint
Posts: 717
Rep:
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Yea it looks like your system is trying to boot from the, new harddrive and cant find the kernel. What does your bios say when the computer boots? which drive is master and which one is slave?
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09-25-2002, 12:04 AM
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#5
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Member
Registered: Aug 2002
Distribution: SME Server, CentOS
Posts: 219
Original Poster
Rep:
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I don't think drive locations are the problem, I think that the MBR or something has been permanently corrupted. I tried upgrading (repairing) the Linux part of the installation on the drive and now I am getting "kernel image not found" when I boot from the rescue floppy even though the kernel image is right where it is supposed to be. Booting from the hard drive continues to give the "disk read ..." errors.
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09-25-2002, 05:51 AM
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#6
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Member
Registered: Jul 2002
Location: Santa Cruz, CA
Distribution: lfs
Posts: 538
Rep:
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No, I'm pretty sure that your mbr is o.k. I got the same error not too long ago. the "LI" is an error message for a particular problem... i think that it loads the bios but then can't find the mbr or something (I forget) search around on google, I found a table explaining every lilo error message. Do you have a windows rescue disk? I'm sure there's a way to boot your linux kernels, but i don't know how. How about putting LILO on a boot disk?
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09-25-2002, 07:49 AM
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#7
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LQ Guru
Registered: Jun 2001
Location: South Alabama
Distribution: Fedora / RedHat / SuSE
Posts: 7,163
Rep:
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XP will switch the drive assignments, you need to boot to a root boot disk and look and see what you have with fdisk
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09-25-2002, 12:05 PM
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#8
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Member
Registered: Aug 2002
Distribution: SME Server, CentOS
Posts: 219
Original Poster
Rep:
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I've been in under the Recovery Console and used the command 'map' and 'fdisk' and all the partitions seem to be in place. I am using the NTFS.
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09-26-2002, 10:27 AM
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#9
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Senior Member
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: UK .
Distribution: *buntu (usually Kubuntu)
Posts: 2,692
Rep:
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sounds like ????????????
Not sure if it's any help but your snag sounded like one of the abortive attempts that I had when I was trying to set up my dual boot (single hdd).
I had already re-installed my XP and mandrake 8.2 successfully when I found the repair facility that would reinstall the windows MBR by way of a rescue.
Sorry, don't know about deadrat!
regards
John
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09-27-2002, 05:46 AM
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#10
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LQ Guru
Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Salt Lake City, UT - USA
Distribution: Gentoo ; LFS ; Kubuntu ; CentOS ; Raspbian
Posts: 12,613
Rep:
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We must all sound like crack pots, but it really does just sound like a jumper issue of some sort.
Most of the distros now have a "rescue" option. Sometimes in the rescue mode you even have an option to "reinstall" lilo to the MBR. To get into this, plug in your install CDROM, and at the first screen (where you can usually hit F1 to see help or more install options) hit F1 and type rescue, or read the documenation there and go into rescue mode.
The thing is, that even if you do reinstall LILO to the MBR, if your jumpers are backwards, and it install LILO to the MBR of the wrong disk, it still won't boot. Try switching the jumpers of the rescue option doesn't work. Let us know what you find...
Cool
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09-27-2002, 02:20 PM
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#11
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Member
Registered: Aug 2002
Distribution: SME Server, CentOS
Posts: 219
Original Poster
Rep:
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Here is what I found:
I had my BIOS settings for my hard drives set to AUTO. When I reset them them in the BIOS, I find that I can boot up again. It appears to be a BIOS problem, but I do not rule out a virus corrupted boot sector. There are too many cockroaches out there spreading these things around. It could be that resetting my BIOS has bypassed the virus.
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