PDA

View Full Version : How Knoppix Saved My Laptop =)



sowthpaw
07-21-2007, 10:20 PM
Hi,
before I get started, I would like to thank Knoppix (and the Knoppix community) for providing so many useful tools for people, as the distro was able to save my laptop. Basically heres my story:

My laptop is a simple Toshiba Satellite that is about 3 years old. As you may assume, the laptop was pre-installed with Windows XP. This lasted me for about 2 years when I decided to move over to Ubuntu and work with linux for a bit. When I installed Ubuntu, I had it erase any trace of Windows XP on the system, and was going to be fully Ubuntu. So for the past 6 months I was working with Ubuntu, and came to the conclusion I was not impressed. I backed up all of my documents from my time with Ubuntu, and stored them on my USB drive. At this point I'm fine, and all is going well. Heres when I made a dumb decision. In order to get back Windows XP, I had to put in my restore disk into the laptop, and see if I can get it to boot Windows again. What angers me is that I only got a restore disk with the laptop, and not an install one, because this sort of added to the problem. So after the disc was done "restoring" it rebooted and came up with my first error. The first error I got was along the lines of this: "grub loading stage1.5 Error: 71." What I found out was that Ubuntu's boot loader had not been erased, and was still searching for the linux system. At this point, I had no clue what to do, and thought I was locked out of my PC forever. But then I remember I had the Knoppix CD in my desk drawer. I changed the BIOS setting to boot it from the CD, and now had at least access to an Operating System again. I went into the Konsole, and started playing around and seeing what I can do...nothing a success. I noticed Knoppix had a grub program that I can research. I looked at all of grubs commands, and it seemed their was no way I can get rid of it. I continued to do research using my other comp looking for some solution to my problem. Their was people suggesting to use commands like fixmbr, fixboot, fdisk, etc.. and none of them really did much. After about a day of trying things..I became annoyed. I remember at this point using fdisk (I think.. because I vaguely remember) to erase my partition again, leaving no operating system on the hard disk. Now when I rebooted I got a different error (but at least the grub one was gone). It went like this "Intel PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, System won't boot." I researched this problem, and I was getting responses like "shake your comp" and "take out the battery"...and of course these didnt work for me...the other people had the same problem but because of another reason. My reason was because it was looking for an operating system..and couldn't find one...so it tried connecting to a LAN. So again, I boot into Knoppix and see if their is something I can do...I play around with all of those previous commands...all to no avail. Finally after doing more research I found a command about fixing the mbr. It was like "install-mbr -p......etc". But instead of using the full command, I just typed "install-mbr --help". I noticed something that I can do that might be helpful. So I exit Knoppix, and use the Windows recovery CD again. Then I go BACK into Knoppix, and notice my hard disk recognizes the Windows System again, but probably won't work. So now I use that command I thought may be helpful. It was this: "install-mbr -r --reset /dev/hda". After I entered this command..I rebooted my laptop...and then...and then!...the Windows logo boots up for the first time in a long time....lol I had finally got it to work, and dedicate all of this success to the Knoppix distro...because of the tools it had handy for me in an emergency situation. I would like to thank all of the people in this community and for them keeping the distro going...

Thankyou! :D