No prob. booting for weeks, now I get 'L 99 99 ...'

[SO(3)]

The problem: I get "L 99 99 99 ..." for half a screen at each boot attempt.

I've been dual booting Mandrake 10.1/XP (on separate physical drives: XP on hda, 'drake on hdb) for a few weeks now without problems. Since the last boot, I have not changed any system settings (well, to the best of my knowledge; and I definitely have not changed lilo.conf -- lilo is my boot loader, which is probably inferable from "L 99 ...").

The last time I shut down the machine was with

# shutdown -h now

while X was running and some remote drives were still mounted. I have no idea if this is significant, but it's a first for me as I have been shuting X down before the machine.

I tried two things after googling the above error:

1) Reinstall the bootloader via the "rescue" option from the first Mandrake ISO: this did not fix the problem.
2) Add "linear" to the global options of lilo.conf: this also did not work (in case it is not obvious, I edited the lilo.conf also via the Mandrake CD but chose the console option get to /etc/lilo.conf)

Any links to helpful stuff, suggestions for fixing the booting problem, or methods of backing up my home directory without booting linux would be GREATLY appreciated.

[SO(3)]

I figured it out and everything is working smoothly now. Here's my fix for those of you in a similar situation:

1) Put the gun down.
2) Install linux over Windows on hda.
3) Mount hdb and migrate all personal files to new home directory.
4) Ask yourself why Windows was ever on your machine. If the answer does not contain the strings "my life" and "depends on it" very close together, then you are one step closer to true happiness; donate that Windows CD to charity.

[fingal]

That's cool - I've never dual booted with XP but I think the 9999r error happens when your bootloader is on a partition which is too large for it - I used to get it when I set my box up with lilo on a separate partition.

I think Windows occasionally over-writes the MBR as well: I've heard the screams!