I'm trying to install RH 6.1 on its own drive, but after the [apparently] successful completion and reboot, the screen prints an endless series of 10101010 following the BIOS information.

This drive did used to have NT Server on it, but I formatted it in the traditional DOS way. After the 1's and 0's problem came up the first time, I used the DOS debug tool to do a low level format. I then initially partitioned with FAT 32 but did not install Windows. When the problem occurred after the second installation, I used fdisk to delete the MBR.

The same problem happened following this attempt as well. I think I've aged 10 years in the last 6 hours. I'd be greatful for any suggestions. Thank you.

Hi there,

Even I have been under such situation before. What I have observed is, it is because of corrupt MBR. What I did was..
(Before doing all these things make sure your first partition falls below 1024 cylinders)

fdisk /mbr -- to rewrite MBR

Then

I did sys afresh

Then followed fresh installation of linux...

Really it did work! And I hope it will work for u too!

Pashupathi Srinivasa
Systems Assistant,
Webspectrum Software Pvt. Ltd.
India

Thanks for your reply!

What I ended up doing (before I read your post) is a dual boot with Win98, and that was fine. That's not what I ideally wanted, but it is fine. Now I'm on to the next set of challenges .

Please forgive my ignorance. What is sys afresh?

I too came to the conclusion that the MBR must be corrupt, so applied fdisk /mbr, but that is as far as I took it.