Cylinders, heads and sectors

Steve900 · 12-08-2010, 12:53 PM

13.1 was running ok for a few days but would then not boot up. Reinstalled and got lots of 99's when trying to boot. Ran RIPLinux (but this not a tool that I know well) and saw strange numbers, ie > 100% for a test of the cylinders, I think. So question is - how to test everything? Hardware for the moment since Slack not running.

Lapton is a (old) Packard Bell 6000 .

business_kid · 12-08-2010, 01:14 PM

99s sounds like a boot loader fault to me. If the disk is bad, it tells you, or it just sits there for a long time and says nothing, or makes evil sounding clacking noises.

Slackware in general uses lilo. I use grub, but I'd look there - /etc/lilo.conf and then run lilo. Man lilo - I've forgotten all about it.

Steve900 · 12-08-2010, 01:17 PM

Yes you could be right but for the moment nothing works so how do I start testing the most basic things, hard-disk for example and memory and so on and so which tool to use?

TobiSGD · 12-08-2010, 01:42 PM

For memory you can use Memtest86+, for the harddisk I would recommend the Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, despite its name it will test harddisks from all manufacturers.
Both tests have to be burned as an image to CD.

business_kid · 12-09-2010, 03:03 AM

If you have an install cd for linux, you can usually boot off that.

LAST_RESORT: In m$ windows (spit) you can build a tomsrtbt linux floppy. Instructions on
http://www.toms.net/rb

or of course any of the bootable cds

Steve900 · 12-11-2010, 03:57 PM

So I tried the simplest way (because nothing to lose on hd) and reinstalled Slack. And this time it worked. So my next question - of a slightly different nature - if it LOOKS like it works, Slack 13.1 I mean, how can I check the installation?

kurtwall · 12-11-2010, 04:14 PM

I don't think re-installing was necessary. Rather, according to TFM, what an error code 99 means is:

Quote:

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...

Perhaps all that was needed was to re-run LILO.

kurtwall · 12-11-2010, 04:16 PM

I don't think re-installing was necessary. Rather, according to TFM, what an error code 99 means is:

Quote:

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...

Perhaps all that was needed was to re-run LILO.

php · 12-12-2010, 09:37 AM

I would definitely run some tests on that hard drive before using it to do anything important with, to be safe.