Booting issues

[B4L1STA]

Hello everyone:

I have been a fan of Knoppix for a very long time. However, I recently ran into some problems: after installing an old CD-ROM drive and 1 gig (woohoo, a whole gig!) hard drive in my computer from my old computer, I could no longer boot from the Knoppix CD (or any other bootable CD's). I have played around with the bios boot sequence with no luck. It just simply refuses to boot from the CD.

So my question is: what are my options for running Knoppix? One option I have read about is a "Poor man's install". I have also heard about "Floppy boots". I full HDD install really isn't an option for me because i have such limited hard disk space. The best option would be to fix the CD boot, but I'm not sure if this is possible (would removing the 2nd CD-ROM drive help?)

So what should I do in your opinion? Are there any other options for me? Any help is appreciated :)

P.S. Sorry for a noob question :(

[Harry Kuhman]

If this computer used to boot from the same cd and cd drive fine and no no longer does, and if you have checked your BIOS boot order, then my guess would be that the drives are not jumpered right. While there are multiple ways to configure the system, I would suggest that the hard drive be on the primary controller. If there is only one hard drive it must be jumpered as master (or a few older drives had a jumpering option that had to be selected if ony one drive was used that differed fro the master setting) If you add a second hard drive it gets jumpered as slave and the first one must be master in that case. The CD dtrives should be on the second ide controler. The first one must be jumpered as master, the second one as slave. Never use the CS jumper setting.

You might also want to look into using Smart Boot Manager, but attend to the above first. SBM is not going to correct any jumpering or configuration problems.

[B4L1STA]

Thanks for the quick reply :)

I ended up just taking the second drive out... that fixed the issue. You're right, after you said that, I realized that i did never change the jumper settings on the second CD-ROM drive :(

Everything else is the way you described though, so it looks like I'm all set and back to using Knoppix. I'm planning on buying new HD as soon as i get some money, then I can do a full install of some distro. Maybe I'll just stick with Knoppix :)

Thanks again for your quick reply!