boot from .msi image ??????

[porkrind]

Greeting's ! i am from another planet.
i do not have a CD writer.
i do have Alcohol.
i could download the ISO, and create an alcohol image .msi file, and after booting WinXP(nfts), i could mount the .msi in Daemon virtual drive.

will this Work ?

i would really like to get to know something in linux.

[porkrind]

thank you for your support . 8)

[Harry Kuhman]

thank you for your support . 8)
I was going to make sarcastic statements about the foolishness of expecting another OS to boot and run from an Alcohol "virtual drive". After all, the drive only exists under a Windows application, and when you boot Knoppix you are not running Windows. I decided that you didn't need my sarcasm and restrained myself.

Now you're being sarcastic that I didn't make the sarcastic comment?

[porkrind]

Harry Kuhman : thank you !
i am glad you didnt make the sarcastic remark.
i was reaching for an idea, hopeful, and wanting some info to understand more clearly.

you have answered my question. i am now downloading knoppix on my g/f's machine ( 56k !) only another day or two. but she has a burner , and i dont.

i am on a learn as i go system, and the learning curve has been rising at a quantum(squared) rate beyond my capabilities since i began.

i am hopeful that knoppix could be the red shoes that get me into linuxia.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... i am now downloading knoppix on my g/f's machine ( 56k !) only another day or two. but she has a burner , and i dont....
I sure hope that you're using Bittorrent for that download, the mirrors have problems and about half my downloads from mirrors have been corrupt. Would be real bad news at 56k if that happened. Bittorrent is far more reliable, has it's own built-in checking. Allows for recovery and continued downlload after a disconnect too. If using a mirror do check that md5 sum. And burn the iso at a slow speed. And be sure you know how to burn an iso as an image with whatever burning software she has. Good luck.

[porkrind]

thanks, yes i used Bittorrent. then burned disc with alcohol. it wont boot.
oh well.
tried on two machines.
i probably need to wait for a blue moon on friday the thirteenth with choobaka in retrograde.
yes, linux bitter. it never works. whats up with that ?

[Harry Kuhman]

...i probably need to wait for a blue moon on friday the thirteenth with choobaka in retrograde.
yes, linux bitter. it never works. whats up with that ?

Blue moons come at the end of the month, never on Friday the 13th.

Your lack of detail in exactly what steps you took to "burn the iso" as well as your "linux ..... it never works" indicates a unshakeable belief that you did nothing wrong and that the fault must be with Linux, not in the making of the CD or the booting of it. While perhaps you expect us to plead our case by typing twenty times as much as you did to convince you to keep trying, I'm not going to.

[porkrind]

Dear Harry, i did say i'm bitter, didnt i ?

it could well be that i did not burn it correctly, however, when i accessed the file through the CD player, it open a Knoppix page, on the machine i burned it on.

i actually am still trying, pardon my indulgence, i do appreciate your help and attention.

on one machine, running winME in defective mode, the CD runs for several minutes, then Win loads. in that case the CD drive cannot be seen for several more minutes, then appears and claims to have no media content.
i am considering how i might format the HDD, and then try the Knoppix disc ?

in the other machine, the CD player also fires up for about 2 minutes, then winXP home boots,
(for reference sake, both machines usually lit the CD for about 12 seconds, before boot)
in this machine, i have a winXP fast boot tweak that causes winXP to be found on the drive within 30 seconds and boot. so that tweak might be the problem, although i havent rediscovered it, or found a way to undo it yet.

and i currently working on machine 1

i burned the image as raw/dao in alcohol at 4/s

thank you , if or even if not, you have any more patience for me . 8)

[Harry Kuhman]

it could well be that i did not burn it correctly, however, when i accessed the file through the CD player, it open a Knoppix page, on the machine i burned it on.
Hey! Some actual information we can respond to!

I don't use Alcohol so don't know the exact right way to burn an iso in it, but if you burnt the ISO and the disk behaves as stated above when inserted in a running windows machine then it seems right, from the few details this presents. The Knoppix page that opens should be a result of autorun.ini opening a local html file in your browser. You should also be able to see an entire file structure on the disc, including subdirectories (folders in xp jargon).

You say this happens on the machine i burned it on. It should happen on any running windows system unless CD auto-run has been disabled. Does it happen on the machine where the CD fails to boot? Can that system read the CD? If not then you certainly have a smoking gun and someting to resolve.


on one machine, running winME in defective mode, the CD runs for several minutes, then Win loads. in that case the CD drive cannot be seen for several more minutes, then appears and claims to have no media content.
i am considering how i might format the HDD, and then try the Knoppix disc ?

Do you ever get to the point where you have a boot prompt, or does the several minutes of spinning happen without ever getting that far? Anything at all typed on the screen in the process?

In my experience I see no reason at all why you should be doing anything to the hard disk. On some memory starved systems you might need a swap file or a swap partition, but certainly not if you're not even gettin to the boot prompt. You're focusing on the wrong thing here.


in the other machine, the CD player also fires up for about 2 minutes, then winXP home boots,
(for reference sake, both machines usually lit the CD for about 12 seconds, before boot)
in this machine, i have a winXP fast boot tweak that causes winXP to be found on the drive within 30 seconds and boot. so that tweak might be the problem, although i havent rediscovered it, or found a way to undo it yet.
No tweek that you have in Windows for faster booting is going to be an issue. Knoppix loads clean, Windows is never involved. So if Knoppix is booted from CD the Windows code should never be seen or run, so it's not a cause for a Knoppix boot to fail.

Quite simply, Knoppix doesn't care if you have Win95, Win98se, Win2k, XP, DOS 3, OS2 or anything else on the hard disk (or if you even have a hard disk), the CD boot should not be affected. The only exceptiion to this is it will use a swap partition if it finds one, or if it's really staved for memory and there is no swap partition it may ask if it can ceate a swap file (but will never make one if it doesn't ask of if there is not a partition available that it can write to safely. If you are not getting to the boot prompt then none of this is an issue. If you are then it would have been nice to mention that, as there are several things that can be typed at that point that might help you boot, will check your CD and the ability to read it, and even run an extensive memory test.

[porkrind]

Harry ,
i formated the defective winME machine and installed winXPhome it has 64M RAM, AMD K2 500, Compaq
it still will not boot Knoppix, it does not get to a command prompt during boot w/ the Knoppix CD in the drive.
machine 1 boots to COMPAQ display, the little prompt ? (-)(when you can hit the F8 key to enter safe mode) appears top left, then a larger (-) appears top right then boots to winXP boot sreen
machine 2 has winXPhome w/ 526M RAM, Intel Cel 700, it also will not boot Knoppix , it does not get to a command prompt for Knoppix either.

once these machines have booted to winXP, the CD Drive (D:), claims to have no CD in them ( please insert CD in drive)

could it be that these CD Drives cant read CD-R ? ( i have run CD-R in them both before, but only after windows boots to desktop.
or do i not understand the "set to boot from CD" or what you mean by CD autorun ?
i have both machines set in BIOS to : CD first, floppy second, HDD third
is this where i am missing something ?

thank you.

[Harry Kuhman]

once these machines have booted to winXP, the CD Drive (D:), claims to have no CD in them ( please insert CD in drive)

could it be that these CD Drives cant read CD-R ? ( i have run CD-R in them both before, but only after windows boots to desktop.

Well, the 64 meg system might be a bit tight on memory for Knoppix (I would think it's tight on memory for XP too), and it could want to create a swap file but be unable to do so because of the NTFS partitions. But even if that is the case you would expect to see the CD from inside windows.

You would also expect to see it on the 512 meg system.

I wold try booting into Windows and then inserting the CD to see if you can read the CD.

If these systems just can't read the CD then that certainly explains why they can'y boot the CD. Why they can't read the CD I don't know. Even though you reported that the system that burnt it can read it, can it still read it (after a reboot)? Did you try booting Knoppix on the system that can read the CD?

I don't know Alcohol, but are you sure that you burned the CD at 4x? Did it take about 20 minutes to make the CD (plus any time it took to verify the data)?

You certainly have some clues to help you track this down. I don't know if it's that both of those drives are having problems reading a good CD, or if the CD isn't quite right, or if it's really bad and the Alcohol system was playing mind games with you. But you should be able to determine where the problem is if Windows can't even see the CD.


or do i not understand the "set to boot from CD"
That's the BIOS setting, sounds like it's correct for you. Some very old BIOSs (like what might be in that 64 meg system) had the option to boot from CD but couldn't quite boot some CDs properly. If that is the case, the program Smart Boot Manager can boot the CD for you and get past any BIOS issues. But if you can't even see the CD when you boot Windows (put the CD in after Windows comes up from a cold boot), then SBM isn't going to help.


or what you mean by CD autorun ?.
Windows has a feature that can detect when a CD has been inderted into the drive and will run "something" when the CD is inserted. If this feature is enabled (the default) then for a data disc it looks on the CD for a file called autorun.inf (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22autorun.inf%22&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official) and take instructions from there for what program to run when the CD is inserted, what icon to display for the CD and so on. It is seeing the autorun.ini file and the instructions that are inside it that causes the Knoppix information to pop up in a browser when the disc is inserted into a running Windows system (if the system reads the CD properly and if autorun has not been turned off).



I would first figure out why two systems seem to be unable to read the CD properly from WIndows. If there is some issue with the CD then you might want to burn another copy with some software other than Alcohol (I don't know that Alcohol is an issue, I just have never used it and there is clearly some problem here). If the CD is fine but the CD readers are the source of the problem then again maybe another CD might help (try a CD-RW this time rather than a CD-R, it will make a big difference to the reader). Or you might decide to swap out the CD drive or just that it's not worth the effort to get them up to booting a CD.

[porkrind]

sorry to have Troubled you Harry ! , i just read that alcohol cannot make a bootCD.

i would like to try the CD i have in the system i burned it on, but the owner is not comfortable with that.

i'm going to have to get a Nero prog and and start over, my g/f's fone will be tied up for several more days. 8)

thanks again for all your help, i will let you j=know in a week or so .

[Harry Kuhman]

sorry to have Troubled you Harry ! , i just read that alcohol cannot make a bootCD..
Again, I don't know Alcohol, but it's one thing for a package to not be able to make a bootable CD from scratch, it's quite another for a package to not be able to burn what's contained inside an iso and have the result boot (assuming the ISO was bootable). That's effectively just making a copy of a CD, although it is a copy from an ISO file rather than a copy made with 2 CD burners. (Not different at all from making a copy when you have a temp file and one drive). I'm appaled if Alcohol claims to burn ISO files but somehow changes something so the result is not bootable, but I'm not convinced that this is what is happening yet. Still, I do think it's better to try a program that is known to do the job right than to keep working with Alcohol.


i'm going to have to get a Nero prog and and start over, my g/f's fone will be tied up for several more days. 8)
If using Nero 6 (and not the Nero for Dummies version), you want to use the File-> Open command to open the ISO and then burn it as slow as Nero will let you go.

Not sure why you need to get another ISO download. You didn't delete the last one before you knew the CD worked did you?? After days of download? Well, there is a new version out as of Wednesday, but there have been a lot of quick back to back releases lately; who knows how soon the next will be? I would not download the new one on dial-up just because it's new if you don't have to. Absolutely use Bittorrent; it will let you resume the download if needed with minimal loss. And don't delete the ISO early this time.

Good luck, keep in touch.

[porkrind]

yo ! Harry ! i got a knoppix 3.3 from a cousin and it works , cool wrays !

i even figured out how to connect to the internet with it.

next i would like to access my windows drive if thats possible. it actually seems necessary since thats where almost all my stuff is.

i'm thinking that Xwin is the thing ?
well i'll be exploring.

[Harry Kuhman]

next i would like to access my windows drive if thats possible. it actually seems necessary since thats where almost all my stuff is.

i'm thinking that Xwin is the thing ?
I know not of this Xwin thing you speak of. If you want to access you windows drive, just do it. There are several ways, the simplest way is that there should be one or more icons on your desktop for whatever partitions you have (names like hda1 for the first partition on the frist IDE drive). Click it. Access!

Writing to the paritions is a different matter. Since you say you have XP you most likely have NTFS partitions. Here's all you need to know about writing to NTFS partitions with Linux: Don't do it. You will corrupt your disk. This is a gift from Microsoft, a deliberate design and a result of keeping a lot of stuff about the NTFS partitions propritary. If you want to write to partitions in Knoppix you'll either need to resize partitions and make space for a FAT partition (use a Windows program like Partition Magic and defrag the partitions first), use an external drive or a USB flash drive, or slap in another hard drive. Wxin, whatever that is, DosBOX or even Wine are not going to let you write to an NTFS partition safely, if you try, have good baskups.

[porkrind]

thanks Harry ! for mentioning the NFTS problem, and more.

i think your right about Microsoft, i believe they are doing things in their Updates that screw with FireFox too. i'm not really qualified to know though.

i did find the hard drive, too, under super\user, i think it is.

i'm going to stop playing w/ knoppix on my main machine though and look for some memory to upgrade my no.2.

thanks for being here, and helping me get my foot into the, JAWS of LINUX .............

[nnigam]

I wonder if AMD K2 is the problem. I am having troubles booting from the Knoppix CD 3.4, 3.81, and 3.9 on an AMD62-450 pc. I had debian 3.0 installed on it and it was working fine. For the upgrade to debian 3.1, I upped the ram from 128 to 394, and added a dvd drive. Then my debian refused to boot with all sorts of errors including an error that it could not fsck the disk. I then tried to boot from knoppix to copy my files out of it so that I could reformat and make a new installation. I finally had to move the disk to another pc. I still had problems with knoppix 3.9, but eventually got my files off. Then the debian 3.1 boot disk booted, but refused to go all the way to the installation. I guess that I will upgrade my pc. But I really would like to know what the problem is.