Can't boot Version 3.8.2 on a Dell Dimension 8250

[jkellyjr]

CMOS setup doesn't offer any way to change boot order, just enable/disable drives. I tried disabling everything ahead of the CD/ROM and it wouldn't boot. I tried the F12 selective boot screen to specifically call out the CD/ROM and it still wouldn't boot. Am I missing something?

[UnderScore]

Is the downloaded ISO file is perfect & not corrupt? See the Downloading FAQ (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Downloading_FAQ) which provides info on checking the ISO file. Did you burn the ISO as a image? If you are running Windows and using Nero to burn the CD then please see http://www.rocketfodder.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/MySite/Burning_Linux_Live_CD's_With_Nero_page1.htm.
I hope this helps.
James

[Harry Kuhman]

CMOS setup doesn't offer any way to change boot order, just enable/disable drives. I tried disabling everything ahead of the CD/ROM and it wouldn't boot....
If you really really want to believe that the disc you made is good, then another thing you could do is download the Smart Boot Manager (http://btmgr.webframe.org/) installer and install a copy to a floppy (or even to your hard drive). Booting that will bring up a menu that will let you boot any bootable partition or CD/DVD drive, no matter what boot issues your BIOS has.

But I tend to agree with James, the disk is most likely made improperly. Follow all of his instructions and also be sure to burn the ISO at a slow speed, not as fast as your drive can burn. 4x recommended.

[jkellyjr]

Thanks for your prompt replies. The disk in question is a commercial disk from Linux Central. I didn't think I would have to run an md5 test on it. Is there any rap on bad experience with their disks? Judging from the "blinkies", the machine is looking at the CD/ROM drive first, if I take the hard disk out of the boot sequence. When I use the F12 list to specifically select the CD, it looks at it and then gives a "Press F1 to try again error message." Any other thoughts?

[Harry Kuhman]

Any other thoughts?
Try the disk on another system, if it doesn't work it points much more towards the disk beng bad. Even if it does work it's not proof that there is anything wrong with your system.

I know nothing good or bad about Linux Central. But anyone making and selling CDs is likely to try to crank them out as fast as they can. If the CD is burnt rather than pressed from a master, then they likely did a high speed burn unless they stated otherwise. In theory, good quality media burnt on a good brand high speed burner should be just fine. In reality we see a lot of problems with high speed burns, including that they boot on some systems and not on others. Two of many examples are http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17788 and http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=78925#78925 . My thought is to follow the Get Knoppix link at the top of this page, use Bittorrent to download a new ISO of Knoppix, an burn it at a slow speed like 4x. Read the downloading faq, read through the forums, and ask questions if you don't already know how to burn an ISO file. Do not just drag and drop it to your CD burning software.

[jkellyjr]

Go figure. I copied the knoppix iso and md5 files to a directory on the hard drive. Neither had the proper extension, so I renamed them to md5sum.md5 and knoppix.iso. I ran the Windows MD5summer program on them after checking the program against the test md5 that comes with the download. The check of knoppix.iso yielded 41 errors! They were all of the type "file does not exist" -- including the autorun.bat file. No mention was made as to whether the checksum test verified the iso file. I'm running Windows XP Home, Service Pack 2 on the 8250. I'm now pretty much at a loss. Does any of this make any sense to anyone?

[Harry Kuhman]

Go figure. I copied the knoppix iso and md5 files to a directory on the hard drive. Neither had the proper extension, so I renamed them to md5sum.md5 and knoppix.iso. I ran the Windows MD5summer program on them after checking the program against the test md5 that comes with the download. The check of knoppix.iso yielded 41 errors! They were all of the type "file does not exist" -- including the autorun.bat file. No mention was made as to whether the checksum test verified the iso file. I'm running Windows XP Home, Service Pack 2 on the 8250. I'm now pretty much at a loss. Does any of this make any sense to anyone?
It makes absolutely no sense. What in the world were the extensions of the files before you think you had to rename them? MD5summer does only one thing, it checks the md5 schecksum of one or more files against the checksum(s) in the .md5 file. In this case you had only one file to check, the ISO, so md5summer can only tell you if the checksum is good or not, it can not and does not tell you how many errors there are or where in the ISO the errors are. It just doesn't work like that. Sounds like the file that you renamed to have an md5 extension is not what you thought it was. Where did you get these files originally?

[jkellyjr]

The Linux Central disk had 6 directories and subdirectories on it. One main directory contained some files labeled isolinux, etc. The other main directory was labled Knoppix and contained various language index.html files, autorun.bat files, etc., as well as a file labeled md5sums (no extension) and knoppix (no extension). The "knoppix" file was 700MB+, so I presumed that it was the iso file. I copied the md5sums file to the hard drive, added an .md5 extension to to it. I copied the knoppix file to the same directory, and added an .iso extension. I ran the md5sum test against "knoppix" renamed knoppix.iso -- 41 errors. Then it occurred to me that the disk contained all the burned image files and that the md5 might apply to the whole disk. So, I ran MD5summer against the whole disk, using F:\KNOPPIX\KNOPPIX, the directory that contained the md5sums file and the operating file as the root directory. Same result. This method could have generated errors, since there were a number of files on the disk that were not in the chosen "root directory". I was hoping someone out there might have tried to boot knoppix on a dimension 8250 from just a downloaded .iso and .md5 pair and had the same problem. I can't download the .iso myself, because after 169 MB in an hour, my ISP (Direcway) cuts me back below phone line download rates (to ~ 10Kb/s) for overusing their system. My backup provider (a Verizon land-line based service -- vintage 1930 wiring -- never more than 26 Kb/s) would also exhaust my life expectancy before it could hand a 700MB download. If anyone has any thoughts on either .md5-ing the Linux Central disk or solving the Dell boot problem, I would be most appreciative. Thanks very much for your help.

[jkellyjr]

Dumb me! I was misusing md5summer. When I backed off the root directory to F:\KNOPPIX, it faithfully checked md5 for all 41 files on the disk. The disk is good. The computer won't boot from it. The computer can read the disk in Windows Explorer, and the html intro page autoruns properly, so reading doesn't seem to be the problem. Anyone with thoughts on forcing a cold boot from CD/ROM on the Dell Dimension 8250, Windows XP Home, Service Pack 2?

[Harry Kuhman]

The "knoppix" file was 700MB+, so I presumed that it was the iso file.
Nope, wrong assumption there. And wrong in more than one way. The "knoppix" file you saw was not over 700 megs in size; all of Knoppix is smaller than that. You want to learn to spot the difference between bytes, Ks and MEGs. If you go back and look that file will really be less than 695 megs (depending on exactly what Knoppix version it is). And the ISO was used to burn that CD, but is not on the CD, you can't do the MD5 check that way.

There is a testcd feature in Knoppix. I suspect that it uses the file that you think you should have changed to an md5 extension and it checks the Knoppix CD for you. But you have to be able to get to the boot prompt to do that, which from what you have posted you can't do, so James and I didn't mention it. And I would not put complete faith in the testCD feature anyway when the problem is suspected of being a high speed burn, such a CD could pass the md5 test but still fail to boot.


... I can't download the .iso myself, because after 169 MB in an hour, my ISP (Direcway) cuts me back below phone line download rates (to ~ 10Kb/s) for overusing their system.
Well, I would question if the ISP is really a service provider if they did that. And more to the point, I would take my business elsewhere (I don't use Earthlink any longer because (amoung other reasons) they do the same foolishmness with thier news servers, although not to such silly small limits. Still, based on what you said above, you certainly can download the ISO yourself. Bittorrent allows you to restart a download where you left off. So you could follow the Get Knoppix link at the top of this page, install Bittorrent, forware the BitTorret ports in your firewall to the desired machine or set up Knoppix as a trigger application so that the ports are forwarded whenever you run BitTorrent (I certainly hope you are using a router, which will serve as a firewall), forward the ports in any software firewall you use (please don't even tell me if it's the damn Microsoft one) and start downloading. Yup, it will come down too fast, there are a lot of helpful people seeding Bittorrent and if you have your firewall set right BitTorrent will be fast. Watch your download. When you have close to 150 megs, shut down BitTorrent. Play solotare for an hour to make your idiot ISP happy. Then click on the torrent again, restarting BitTorrent and picking up the download where you left off. Watch and stop around 300 megs. You will have to do this 5 times(actually only 4 stops, the last can run to the finish), and you will have a copy of the ISO. You could even do a few today and a few tomorrow.

[Harry Kuhman]

Dumb me! I was misusing md5summer. When I backed off the root directory to F:\KNOPPIX, it faithfully checked md5 for all 41 files on the disk. The disk is good. The computer won't boot from it.
NO, The 41 files that you checked match their md5 checksums. That does not mean that the disk is good (although it certainly could be), it means that the 41 files you checked are good. It does not mean that the boot code is good, that is a part of the disk that you're not even looking at. And it does not mean that the CD will boot on your system, which you say it does not.

We're back to my two suggestions: Smart Boot Manager, which you seem to ignore when I suggest it, and getting your own copy of the ISO and burning it slowly.

[jkellyjr]

Thanks for putting up with my stupidity. I finally solved the problem in the most dumbly simple fashion. My machine has a DVD-ROM drive as the E: drive (Secondary 0) and a CD-RW drive as the F: drive (Secondary 1). Just putting the bootable CD into the DVD drive and using the F12 boot menu to select "Boot from IDE CD-ROM" made everything work. As a bonus, the DVD drive reads CDs at 48X compared to the 40X of my CD-RW. If I want to obsess my way into the ultimate "purist" state (boot the CD from the CD-RW drive), all I have to do is deactivate the DVD drive in CMOS Setup (it will still work in Windows XP). I'm glad I didn't have to bill anyone for all the wasted hours figuring this one out!

Although I haven't had much time to play with it yet, the Knoppix disk is a kick -- what a ton of stuff crammed onto it. The only thing I couldn't get to work was my Direcway Internet connection, because it uses a USB modem with proprietary software that loads from the C: drive. However they just floated an offer that allows free conversion to their latest Ethernet-based modem that has self-contained software. All the Knoppix should have to do to make the connection is recognize the NIC.

Regarding your comment about taking my ISP business elsewhere, when you live in rural Northern Vermont, you don't have any high-speed options other than Direcway (download speed varies between 200K and 3M). Before I installed that service I spend an entire month hassling with Verizon to get them to find me a phone line that could even see the Internet. The first line they hooked up connected at a generous 1,200 bits/sec -- yes, bits, not Kb. I used to get that speed in 1984 with an old, blue Motorola modem the size of a fax machine. When they finally got it up to 26K, I sensed nirvana. Your suggestion about using Bittorrent interruptible downloads to bypass Direcway's limits sounds great -- I'll have to try it.

Thanks again,

Joe