Huh ?
I installed Slackware 9 yeatserday. The install went OK, until the first reboot. Just after the BIOS displays all the HW info, & the OS is supposed to run, all the happened was a string of 99's. i.e.:
99 99 99 99 99 etc etc for several rows.

I rebooted with the boot floppy I made during the install, got the command line, logged in as root & ran startx. Everything ran OK.

So, I re-installed. Last time, when it asked for the boot option (basic LiLo, advanced LiLO, or nothing) I selected nothing. This time I selected 'basic LiLo'. Still the same thing happened.

I used cfdisk to set up a 13.1GB primary partition (type 83, bootable) for hda1 and a 256 MB primary partion (type 82) for the swap space.

The PC's specs are:
mainboard: ASUS SP97V
processor: 333MHz AMD K6-2
RAM: 64 MB (72 pin SIMM)
HDD: 14GB IBM DeskStar.

Any ideas ?

I had a similiar problem where it displayed all 040404040404 its sumthing to do with lilo i believe do u have another os on the machine ? did u try to pico lilo.conf and make sure it was right ?

There are not any other OSs on the PC, and I haven't done anything to LiLo.

The same thing occured when I installed it without lilo.

Is the drive master or slave...and is it on the primary or secondary IDE controller?
Usually, 99 means incorrect bios settings for the drive or perhaps the jumper is in the wrong position.

The HDD is the only drive on the primary IDE bus, with the CDROM on the secondary. I have checked both sets of jumpers, both are correct.

However, I will go back into the BIOS and run the IDE/HDD detection again.

On the same PC, I had RedHat 8 running just fine. Well, crawling, but everything worked. The reason I changed was that I was looking for a distribution suited to more performancely challenged PCs, but still retaining a decent desktop/GUI.

Last night I installed Vector Linux, & got the same problem.
Again, it booted from the Floppy & I got into KDE OK.
Going through the various systems tools etc, I got to the kernal configurator & got this:

kernel configuration could not be read due to the following error:
cannot open /usr/src/linux/rrch//config.in for reading.
either your kernel sources contain invalid configuration rules or you just found a bug in the KDE kernal configurator.

I do not know if it is related.

Tonight, I'll recheck the BIOS settings, the drive jumpers and the RAM, as I have all manner of trouble getting anything to run:
TinyLinux:Installed & ran OK, but a bit too minimalist for my experience (plus a bit too old ?)
BasicLinux: Installed OK, but would not boot - hung just after BIOS HW report & OS ought to start.
RedHat 8: boots OK, everything works, but real slow.
SuSE 8.1: Instal reported prolems with kernel & YaST packages. + would not boot - hangs on HW check.
Mandrake 9.1: installed & boots OK, but some apps (i.e KWord), will not run - the application window briefly appears, then disappears.
Slackware 9: will not boot from HDD (3½" FDD OK), everything else runs OK.
Vector Linux 3.2: will not boot from HDD (3½" FDD OK), everything else runs OK.

Fun & games, fun & games...

I've seen a problem similar to this when the Master Boot Record was a little messed up. If you have a bootable DOS floppy (like from Win95 or 98), try booting from that and running

fdisk /mbr

Then try reinstalling lilo. See if that helps.

Right, I took a step back & re-installed something that worked.
TinyLinux. I had two plans:
Plan A: install Tiny, set up the HDD with it & then re-install Vector.
Plan B: Install Tiny, as before, then manually update everything (it uses the 2.2.6 kernal), and manually add the needed HW drivers & applications (i.e. OpenOffice, GIMP, etc etc).

First Plan A.
Tiny installed OK, & ... booted up to the command line.
During the installation, I partitioned the HDD with cfdisk:
/hda1 Linux Native (type 83) ~14GB (primary partition)
/hda2 Linux Swap (type 82) ~256MB (primary partition)
hda1 was 'quick' formatted @ inode density 4096 & ext2 file system. (the same as all the other Slackware based installations)

at the end of the install, I told it to use the basic vmlinuz kernal.
I also selected the default boot option & had a basic LiLo setup.

Everything worked OK

So, I rebooted the PC with the Vector CD.
during the install, I skipped the partitioning & formatting of the HDD.
At the end, for some reason, you cannot select any other kernal to use other that on the bootable CDROM.
This time I took the 'safe' option and skipped the LiLo creation.

But, finally when it came to first boot...
This time it got to LiLo !
So, typing Linux, it ran & lo & behold, login & the CLI. Yes !!
now startx...
(ww) VESA: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0:19:0) found /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc: line 28: startkde: command not found

So now I know a: the problem is either in the formatting, or the creation of the MBR, and b: you can't just over write one distro with another...

Next step is to re-install Vector, but this type re-format the HDD (but not touching cfdisk & the partions).

I want pin point the problem, as well as having a working set up !

Update:
I have just re-installed Vector 3.2.
This time I re-formatted the HDD
inode density 4096 (default)
ext2 file system

also, again, I chose to skip LiLo.

The PC ran through it's HW check & just as it ought to load the OS, it showed the letters LI, then locked up.
It seems to me that something is amiss in the MBR, as it looks as if it was trying to load LiLo, but there should not be anything there (LiLo wise, that is...)

It boots from the FDD OK, & KDE runs OK.

Running Boot Manager (LILO) - KDE Control Module, I get the following messages:
***********************
Configuration NOT ok. LILO said:
LILO version 22.4.1 (test mode), Copyright (C) 1992-1998 Werner Almesberger
Development beyond version 21 Copyright (C) 1999-2002 John Coffman
Released 27-Jan-2003 and compiled at 19:45:45 on Mar 9 2003.
Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed
Reading boot sector from /dev/hda
Using MENU secondary loader
Calling map_insert_data
Mapping message file /boot/message
Fatal: open /boot/message: No such file or directory
***********************

***********************
WARNING: the config file is currently NOT ok.
Do you really want to override /etc/lilo.conf?
If you aren't sure, select "no" and click the "Check configuration" button to see the details.
If you don't know what's wrong, try clicking the "Probe" button to auto-generate a working

lilo.conf.
If you're getting this message after using the "Probe" button, please send a full bug report,
including the output of "Check configuration" and the generated lilo.conf (displayed in the

"Expert" tab),
to bero@kde.org
***********************

I have ran "probe", but nothing seems to change & I get the same messages.

Any ideas ?

i had the main problem before, with Mandrake linux...
...with me, it occured because i had swapped the primary slave with another hdd, at that time i was dualbooting with windows XP, i then swapped the hdds back, and it worked, but i never encountered this when doing this swap with slackware....
i think you should try fdisk /mbr to fix some things, fix the mbr with a Windows Disk, and then reinstall linux with lilo...
...'tshould fix the problem...
btw, i used 5GB for swap memory!

Still no joy !
I booted with a Windows 98 bootdisc & ran fdisk /mbr

then re-installed Vector 3.2
When it came to the option of:
basic lilo
expert lilo
none

there is a warning that lilo can cause problems, & that the safe option is not to install it !

So I took the 'safe' option.

Now, after the BIOS HW check, I get:
PRESS A KEY TO REBOOT

Booting from floppy & running the KDE LiLo manager doesn't seem to help either.

Fixed it !

The LiLo Manager reported that /boot/message was not could not be found. So I typed "/boot/meesage" into alltheweb & the first find was an old newsgroup posting.

Someone posted that with an empty 'message' file, lilo didn't work, but after they added just a space, it did.

So using KEdit, I just hit return & saved the blank file into /boot/ as 'message'

Then I ran the Boot Manager (LiLo) - KDE control Module, hit Probe & Apply.
This time no error message, justa long list of stuff that fell off the bottom of the screen...

On reboot, it went straight to LiLo.

This is the strange thing - I did not select any LiLo during the installation !

But now it works.

I get that when installing slackware 9.0 sometimes. Usually after selecting an automatic lilo installation. Just booting off the cd or floppy then using liloconfig seemed to solve that problem.

That is the wierd thing, I got rid of LiLo with fdisk /mbr, & then opted not to install it, but for some reason, there it is !!

lilo doesn't have to install to the MBR, during one of your many install
adventures you may have inadvertantly installed to a partition's
boot sector (I don't recall the exact terminology). If so,
running fdisk /MBR won't erase that one. lilo is not an easy thing to
understand, but here's a hint: the first line (usually) is

boot=/dev/hda

but if it is

boot=/dev/hda1

then you will load the lilo info to the 1st partition not the MBR of the
entire disk, when you execute lilo.

man lilo and man lilo.conf will present you with more info than
you ever wanted.

-bbeers