"The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

Major Hardware Problems

From Rian Kruger on Thu, 23 Sep 1999

Here is my problem.

I have been asked to fix a computer which uses LILO to Boot and is partitioned WinNT, Linux. Fine and Dandy.

The problem is that one morning the computer desides not boot. All I get is LI_ where it should say LILO: and then boot up.

I have a rescue disk but this was created when installing Linux on another machine. Both Destributions are Red Hat.

I insert the disk and start the machine

So then I get LILO: it then says type rescue, which I did... Alls well, till the machine asks:

VFS: Insert root floppy disk to be loaded into ramdisk and press ENTER

On pressing error things go well enough for long enough to give you a false sense of security before hitting you with.

floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 1, sector 12, size 2
floppy0: data CRC error: track 0, head 1, sector 12, size 2
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00, sector 29

repeatedly

If I try to boot linux from the same Boot disk.

[crash messages ellided]

Thats when I got desperate and tried to boot from a NT repair disk (also created on another machine during installation)

And the Computer Says:

The emergency Repair Disk is not startable.

Repairing a damaged Win Nt Installation is an option available at the beginning of the win NT Instalation.

To start setup bla bla bla....

If I take this root, am I going to have to reformat the entire machine, will I loose all the Linux info, How do I save the situation. Please help, sagely advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks
Rian

Sounds like a bad controller, or a dead DMA chip. Might be some memory that went wacky.

It sounds like hardware failure.

Copyright © 1999, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 48 December 1999

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