Black screen after using Knoppix

[feffer777]

I'm a newbie and just used the Knoppix CD on my Dell XP Home based computer. It wouldn't boot by itself, so I changed the BIOS in windows XP to boot CD first, floppy second and hard drive third. The CD then booted and I played around with Knoppix for a while. I wrote and saved some text and added a printer, and was able output my file. Then I did and orderly shutdown and removed the CD when prompted. However, now I'm not able to boot into Windows XP. I thought after not finding a CD or Floppy, the BIOS would find the hard drive and boot XP, but it doesn't. I just get a black screen and it seems no boot at all. So I put the Knoppix CD back in and tried to boot it, but nothing happened. I got a little activity showing as the CD started to spin, but then it stopped and no boot occured? What's happening and how can I get my machine to boot normally?

[Markus]

IIRC Dell uses a somewhat crappy BIOS, you can search this forum on other posts about it.
The solution seems to be to disconnect the powercord for a minute or so (and battery if it's a laptop). After that it should boot normally.

[feffer777]

Thanks for the reply. I tried disconnecting power, but perhaps it wasn't long enough. I'm at work now, so I'll try a longer disconnect when I get home. Was it a mistake for me to change the order of boot on the BIOS? It didn't seem like the Knoppix CD would boot otherwise. Should I disconnect the monitor and other cords as well?

My plan was to see a bit of Linux with the Knoppix CD and then later install Fedora on a second hard drive that I've installed for that purpose. It would be on a separate drive, but this problem has worried me a bit. I need this wintel machine to dual boot; my wife uses it and has no wish to move to Linux. Thanks again.

[feffer777]

Thanks, Markus, unplugging for a few minutes did it! After I got it rebooted in WinXP, I changed the BIOS back to HD first, the default. So I'm happy to get the system back up, but not sure how to boot the Knoppix CD in the future. Any suggestions?

My final goal is to install a Linux distro, probably Fedora, on a second HD that I attached for that purpose. The machine needs dual boot. I want to get a sequence where WinXP is the default, but I can divert it to Linux during the boot. That way, it will not affect my wife's use of the machine; she can boot up as usual. I've read about a few solutions, changing the boot.ini file in Windows, seems the closest to my goal. Any suggestions or better ideas?

[Markus]

I don't think it was a mistake to change the BIOS to boot from CD first. After all, with just windows you might still need to recover by booting from cd. You could also look for a bios upgrade on dell's site.
It's possible to install lilo on the linux partition instead of the MBR and put a line for it in boot.ini, but as the windows bootloader can't boot linux you would still get lilo after NTLDR. If you want to play it safe you can use that or use a bootfloppy for linux.
Putting lilo in the MBR is the easiest method though and if you want to remove it you just boot with a win bootfloppy and issue "fdisk /mbr" or use a wincd and boot into recovery console and issue "fixmbr" and perhaps "fixboot".
I have the same situation with my better half and windows so I've just set lilo to boot as default into windows and told her not to touch the %¤/#! thing until windows has loaded ;)