[Hudlug] Help for Boot failure

[Andy Macdonald]

Andrew,

As Ben says, you need to boot off a floppy or CD - preferably the recovery disc you made when installing (?!). 

You may need to get into the BIOS (press (usually) 'Del' or 'F2' during the start of the boot process) and check the boot order to get it to boot off CD or floppy. While you're there, check that the BIOS still autodetects the hard disc correctly ...

Sounds as though the hard disc has faults. They may be reparable, but usually once you have disc errors it is on the way out and will need replacing sooner or later ... nothing lasts, especially cheap PC hardware! Hard discs are so cheap now that the quality has come right down too (like floppy drives also). We have batches of PCs less than 3 years old where almost all have had new discs put in.

As long as you have data backups, you may find it easier to buy a new hard disc and re-install on it.

On Wed, 07 Apr, Andrew wrote:
> I have been using SuSE Linux 8.2 for about six months. I am a beginner with Linux. Now the program hangs up while booting. Some messages I have spotted include
> 
> 403 segmentation fault
> 
> and
> FAT: bogus logical sector size 0
> cramfs: wrong magic
> reiserfs: found format "3.6"  
> and
> 
> INIT: cannot execute "sbin/mingetty"
> INIT: Id "1" respawning too fast: disables for 5 minutes
> 
> and more of the same wh9ich all means nothing to me.
> Can anyone explain what I should do - preferable in simple language.
> 
> Thank you for at least reading this plea.
> 
> Andrew

-- 
Andy Macdonald
Network Manager, Greenhead College
Huddersfield, HD1 4ES, England.
Tel: 01484 422032; Mobile: 07932 635057
See award winning web site: http://www.greenhead.ac.uk