big screen of 40s. error after installing slackware

caged · 03-22-2004, 08:16 AM

hi.

I thought id try slackware on a computer that iv got.
so i downloaded the isos for slackware 9.1 and burned them off.
through the entire install i didnt have any problems. i installed most of the programs availble and selected KDE as my enviroment. as i say the install apparently went without and problems but when it said the install was sucessful and i could close the setup program and reboot, well i reboot and when the computer restarts and gets to the stage where the OS should be booting then the computer starts spitting 40s at me. the screen quickly ends up looks somthing like this:

Code:

40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4
0 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40
 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4
0 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 
40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4
0 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40
 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 
40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4
0 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40
 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 
40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 4
0 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 40
 40 40 40 40 40

i couldnt find any past threads on this but i didnt think it could be too un common.

HARDWARE:
the computers an intel 600MHz PIII with 512 Megs of RAMBUS ram.

EDIT: i reinstalled and selected Gnome as the GUI enviroment and this time on compleation and reboot i got a screen full of 01s:

Code:

01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 
01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01 01

thanks ben.

trey85stang · 03-22-2004, 11:26 AM

do you only get this when running startx? or does the kernel loading still give 40's?

ringwraith · 03-22-2004, 11:33 AM

You will find the following in 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 limited. 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

Error code 40 is generated by the BIOS, or by LILO during
the conversion of a linear (24-bit) disk address to a geo-
metric (C:H:S) address. On older systems which do not
support lba32 (32-bit) addressing, this error may also be
generated. Errors 99 and 9A usually mean the map file (-m
or map=) is not readable, likely because LILO was not re-
run after some system change, or there is a geometry mis-
match between what LILO used (lilo -v3 to display) and
what is actually being used by the BIOS (one of the lilo
diagnostic disks, available in the source distribution,
may be needed to diagnose this problem).

At this point I would boot into your system using your cd.
at the first cmd line type linux=/dev/hdxx noinitrd ro
after your system comes up, I would rerun liloconfig and install to the mbr again.