Re: computer won't boot now

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• In reply to: Daniel Edmund Davison: "computer won't boot now"
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Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 11:56:20 -0600
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org

Daniel Edmund Davison wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was installing debian on a new laptop yesterday and, briefly, the
> computer now will not boot into anything - not Lilo (which I'd installed
> in the MBR and was choosing betweenn debian and Windows 2000) and not even
> the BIOS setup. If anyone could help me reverse this situation I would be
> very grateful. I would happily start again from scratch with both OSs if
> I could get the bootable CDs to boot.
>
> Thanks and help!!!,
>
> Dan
>
>
> More details:
>
> The situation seems rather erratic. Most frequently the screen displays
> absolutely nothing on powering up. Occasionally a blinking cursor,
> occasionally it hangs with the intel picture. Once (after being left a
> couple of hours(!?)) it went through a period of great achievement and got
> to Lilo twice in a row. The first time I tried to boot Debian and got to
> the network configuration steps (I had got neither my ethernet nor my
> video card working, but those problems seem rather trivial now...). On
> entering my subnet mask it immediately powered down without warning. Then
> I tried to boot Windows2000 which failed saying that it was missing
> root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. That was last night, this morning nothing
> better than the blinking cursor and intel screen.
>
> Even more details:
> I had got both operating systems working, but decided to reinstall
> Linux (which I was doing just by following the debian CD from the
> beginning again). It did the totally blank screen thing once before I
> started the reinstallation, but on powering down and then up it
> worked and I decided to forget about it. The hard drive is partitioned
> like this:
>
> hda1 primary NTFS Windows2000 3150 MB
> hda4 boot primary Linux 45354 MB
> hda3 primary Linux Swap 1019 MB
> hda2 primary FAT32 for sharing 10487
>
> I am installing debian from a downloaded NONUS .iso image.
> As I said, I had put LILO in the MBR (my mistake?). I have no floppy
> drive.

Sorry to say this, especially since it's a laptop, but if it won't even
"boot" into BIOS, you have a hardware problem. The rest of your symptoms
also sound like what you'd see with some sort of hardware failure.
Hopefully when you say "new laptop", you mean "new, under warranty, laptop".

Could be heat-related, (fan not working, etc); could be damaged chip or
mobo; could be RAM failure; could be dead battery confusing the system
(you did let the battery charge fully before using the laptop, right?);
could be problem with hard drive/cdrom confusing the POST.

-- 
Kent
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• Previous message: Andreas Janssen: "Re: What is required to deliver system mail locally ???"
• In reply to: Daniel Edmund Davison: "computer won't boot now"
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