No new programs. I re-installed linux the other day because it wouldn't recognise my new soundcard, but that's all.
Initially it worked oK... then yesterday day, before all this, linux failed to load and told me it couldn't find the init file? Or something like that... so I decided to re-install again, as I had nothing to lose, but half way through the install for some unknown reason it failed and that's when I got L + 99s on startup and as I said now I can't get it to recognise my cd-rom to try the re-install again. I wasn't watching the install so I don't know exactly what happened to stop it installing.
I've been looking at in in isolation from the previous events... that's what happens when you're very tired and can't think strainht.
I think basically what has happened is that it's formatted before the install and the bootloader is nolonger there or half the operating system for that matter. I think the best thing for me to do is rescue what I want from Me, then use Blaster, which is the utility I used originally to partition the disk, and reformat and partition it from scratch. Unless anyone knows how I can get it to recognise the cd-rom in rescue (which I found for the first time last night). I don't know what to type.