Not sure how to fix this

[MoonDog]

Just about a half hour ago I loaded a screensaver on XP Pro (dont remember where I got it), I just went to reboot the computer and it wont boot up. It starts going through its tests and when it gets to the point of verifying the DMI Pool Data, I get this:

L 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99

And then just stops dead, anybody got a clue? Could it have something to do with the BIOS? I am wondering if I pull the CMOS battery out for awhile, that might help. I am a little stumped. :confused:

[MoonDog]

Tell me if this might have something to do with it. In the past few days I have uninstalled Mandrake 9 from a partition I had on the same machine and reformated it to NTFS (I am setting up a dedicated box for this). The LILO bootloader was still coming up since it had written itself to the MBR. I had searched google on this error and even though the responces were in German I could tell that there were references to LILO and Linux.

EDIT: Just found this. The "L" means: The first stage boot loader has been loaded and started, but it can't load the second stage boot loader. The two-digit error codes indicate the type of problem. (See also section ``Disk error codes''.) This condition usually indicates a media failure or a geometry mismatch (e.g. bad disk parameters).

So I am assuming the "99" is the error code, what ever that code means.

[MoonDog]

I got it fixed. Had to boot from my cd and go into the setups recovery. There I was able to do a "fixmbr". I am assuming this is similar to fdisk /mbr. Thanks for all the help guys. :p

[DarkWolf]

Originally posted by MoonDog
I got it fixed. Had to boot from my cd and go into the setups recovery. There I was able to do a "fixmbr". I am assuming this is similar to fdisk /mbr. Thanks for all the help guys. :p

Aye! Yeah no problem :D