boot up shows L9 99999999??? what is it?

[Webster]

I got an error on one of my computers that I've never seen before and was wonder if any of you encountered it before. This happen on a Gigabite motherboard/AMD64 3400+/1Gig RAM/2 320 seagate SATA running Window XP pro. For the past 6 months it booted and ran without any problem. But starting serveral days ago, the darn thing just wouldn't boot. It went through the BIOS dectecting and found all the hardwards without problem, then it hung before booting Windows and the screen show L9 9999................9999. Have any of you gurus out there have seen this (or know what it is) before? The MB and all the hardwares seem to be functioning fine. I placed an IDE drive in the box, installed OS, boot it up and run without trouble. I was able to access (read from/write to) both of the SATA drive without error.
Webster.

[Krispy Kritter]

Sounds like the XP install on the SATA disc is corrupted. Possibly from a virus or hijack software. If you can boot from a CD, you could attempt a repair of the install, or you could perform a fresh install.

[Webster]

Sounds like the XP install on the SATA disc is corrupted.

That what I thought one possible cause (boot sector corrupted hardware/software). But what the heck is the L999..9999???

Possibly from a virus or hijack software.

This is not possible. This box is a stand alone box with no net access. No foreign data is allowed to enter this box . The only thing it does is capture video via a passthru D8 camera or capture HiDef video from HDTV card.

or you could perform a fresh install.

I was trying to avoid this. Man, that is a lot of drivers I need to install. And my drivers installation disks are scatter all over the house (if I can find them all)......

[Nelson37]

Do you EVER see the windows logo, or anything at all windows-related when booting the SATA drive?

On what type of screen backround does the L9 message appear, and is there any other text whatsoever?

My guess would be that this is a motherboard-specific generic failure msg. Need more info to be absolutely certain.

[Webster]

Do you EVER see the windows logo, or anything at all windows-related when booting the SATA drive?

On what type of screen backround does the L9 message appear, and is there any other text whatsoever?

My guess would be that this is a motherboard-specific generic failure msg. Need more info to be absolutely certain.

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. Was sick in bed with the flu for the past couple days.
No, the boot did not quite reach the window boot up part yet. It is still in the BIOS boot part (black screen with white text) right after - press enter to boot from CD prompt.
Anyway, I gave up on the SATA boot up disk and installed the PATA drive as a boot disk. The box is working as it was before this error occured. I'm not going to spend anymore time figuring this out. Anyway, thank for your interest.
Webster.

[Nelson37]

That seems pretty certain to be an error msg generated by the mobo BIOS. Might need a driver, better cable, BIOS update, could be defective drive or mobo. These would be important if either are under warranty.

A search on the manufacturer's website ought to give the definitive answer, though the number like that is usually used for some sort of generic error. A failure, but of what exactly it may not say.

[Webster]

That seems pretty certain to be an error msg generated by the mobo BIOS. Might need a driver, better cable, BIOS update, could be defective drive or mobo. These would be important if either are under warranty.

A search on the manufacturer's website ought to give the definitive answer, though the number like that is usually used for some sort of generic error. A failure, but of what exactly it may not say.

Actually MoBo/drives/CPU are still under warranty. I've justed put this box together a little bit more than 6 months ago. It is supposed to be a temporary box to hold me over until my upgrade to duo core (haven't decided whether I want AMD - brisbane 4400+ or Intel-E6600) system.
At this point in time, I suspect that it may be the drive, and not the MoBo. I did some info. search on the Seagate 320Gig drive, there seem to be a little bit more failure on the particular model I have (7200.10) than normal. As of now, I just keep booting with the ATA drive and use the SATA as a scratch disk until it really die (then I'll return it for another one since it carried a 5 years warranty). Just to be safe, I'll think I'll run SeaTools to check the drives once I have a chance.

edited: Dog gone it!!! Seagate only have the DOS version, there is no Windows version of SeaTools to test SATA drive! And I have no floppy drive in my box!!!

P.S. edited: Whew... look like I jumped the gun. Apparently you can run SeaTools on a bootable CD. My bad..

[Krispy Kritter]

There is also a windows version on the cd...at least on my last few cd's.