Kernel Panic-Knoppix Disk : Need Help

[Elisha8685]

So I'm trying to fix my friend's laptop. An ACER 3620 that would not boot, but gave the message NT Loader missing. So I ordered the ACER 3620 disk and still was not able to load. I have made a little progress but have hit a deadend. Through failsafe, it ran through a bunch of jazz and I am now ending with this message:

READ-ONLY CD SYSTEM SUCCESSFULLY MERGED WITH READ-WRITE /RAMDISK
/linuxrc: cannot create /var/run/utmp" directory nonexistenet
No filesystem could mount root, tried: reiserfs ext3 ext2 msdos vfat iso9660 fuseblk
Kernel panic - Not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (1,3)
_


And I am confused, I can't boot and it appears to have done nothing to help fix the computer. Any suggestions? I have tried most of the cheat commands you all have talked about. I have no experience either with Knoppix so hopefully you can understand my neophytical confusion.

Thanks :cry:

[Harry Kuhman]

It's rather strange that Knoppix can't boot even in failsafe mode. Did you confirm the MD5 checksum before burning the ISO, burn it at low speed and do a verify option when burning? You are using a 700 meg CD and not a 650 meg disc, correct? If all of these can be answered yes (particularly the md5 question, no fair ignoring it just because you don't know what md5 is), then try booting and type memtest at the prompt to run memtest86 and confirm that the computer's memory is OK.

[Elisha8685]

Hey, I bought the CD online to repair everything. Anyways, I tried running memtest, it starts the memory testing for about 3 minutes and then the whole computer shuts off in the middle of the process. I am completely confused. What kind of memtest failure would cause it to do that on me? Well thanks so far for the help.

[Harry Kuhman]

Hey, I bought the CD online to repair everything. Anyways, I tried running memtest, it starts the memory testing for about 3 minutes and then the whole computer shuts off in the middle of the process. I am completely confused. What kind of memtest failure would cause it to do that on me? Well thanks so far for the help.
Well, I have very little faith in a purchased Knoppix CD. They are almost always burnt at high speed (a well known source of Knoppix boot problems) and on poor quality media by someone just looking to make a fast buck off other's work.

But the memtest failure is pretty curious. I'm mot sure what it is telling us. You might want to research memtest86 a bit and see if you can come up with any answers. These are my guesses, in order of how likely I think they are:

1. There is something very wrong with the hardware beyond memory. Could be the CPU itself. Could be the power supply. Could be any of the support chips or even the circuit board.

2. I could still be a memory issue. Memtest86 tries to catch this, but since the program has to run in memory it could have missed an intermittent failure. If there are two memory modules and the system will run on only one I would try running memtest again with one memory module at a time (or 2 at a time if there are 4 memory modules). Or if you can swap the memory out completely it would be worth the test before assuming that #1 above is the answer.

3. Given my bias against purchased Knoppix CDs, I have to wonder if the disc is so bad that memtest86 is bad also. This actually seems pretty unlikely, but I wouldn't want to ignore the chance. You could download memtest86 from the Internet and make a floppy or CD yourself and try running memtest86 from that. If it fails the same way at least that narrows things down to 1 or 2 above (although it does not prove the rest of the Knoppix CD is good). If that second copy of memtest86 runs fine and the Knoppix CD still fails when runing memtest, then consider that my bias against purchased Knoppix CDs may be correct (I've seen problems with them on this website before).

[Elisha8685]

Ok, I burned the CD at 4X and it booted and I'm on, Thanks alot for the Help!! Now can you link me to what i need to know about replacing the NT Loader?
Thanks

[Harry Kuhman]

Ok, I burned the CD at 4X and it booted ....
That seems to be more confirmation that purchased CDs and high speed burn CDs are a source of problems. Have you confirmed that memtest86 runs OK off of the new disc that you burnt yourself?


... Now can you link me to what i need to know about replacing the NT Loader?
If you have crazy ideas about installing Knoppix in spite of all of the warnings against it, no, I will not participate in that abomination. If you like Knoppix and want a stable Knoppix-like system, I advise installing Debian (which the Live CD Knoppix is based on). It will give you all of the benefits of Knoppix without the problems. Part of the install process of Debian will offer to replace the windows loader with grub, and if you have both Windows and Debian on the hard disks it will configure a boot menu that will let you boot either. Make sure that you choose the desktop install option when installing Debian for normal desktop use. Then apt-get KDE if you want it, and apt-get any applications that you want. I suggest doing the net-install rather than downloading full Debian CDs.

[Elisha8685]

I dont know what your talking about. Im just trying to make this computer work again. The original problem was a NTLDR error that wouldn't let the computer boot up. I think I have to replace the damaged or missing NTLDR files but I dont know how to locate them or if I can do it via knoppix. Im running the memtest86 right now and so far its passed testing for the last 40 minutes. Its almost done with its 3rd time getting to 100% pass. Well if you could help me with the Net Loader prob that'd be great thanks.

[Harry Kuhman]

It sounded like you were trying to install Knoppix to the hard disk in a dual boot configuration, that's why people usually ask about replacing the NT loader. If you are just trying to get Windows working again, I would suggest salvaging any needed data with Knoppix and then reinstalling Windows from the Microsoft disks provided. Knoppx (and Linux) does not include the NT loader, that Microsoft code. And as far as I'm concerned, Knoppix can safely read a NTFS partition but should not write to it.

As to the NT loader, that's Microsoft code that starts Windows. A very small part of it is in sector zero, also called the Master Boot Record or just the MBR. Because of space limitations, this is just enough code to call in the rest of the loader from the Windows partition and load windows. In the unlikely event that only the MBR is damaged, you might be able to install one of the Linux boot loaders such as grub or lilo. They know how to call the rest of the boot code in Windows also. But I expect that the actual NT loader on the windows partition is what is missing, and that being Microsoft code it's not part of Linux and Linux can't replace it.

So your best bet as I see it, is data recovery with Knoppix and then one of the all too common reinstalls of Windows (unless your friend wants to give up on Windows and install Linux).

[Elisha8685]

How am I going to data recovery with Knoppix, are you talking about opening with Knoppix and burning information from the hardrive to a disc? Well Thanks for your help with helping me out

[Harry Kuhman]

This seems like a completely different topic than the thread subject, and you likely should start a new thread.

There are any number of ways to save your data. I prefer sending it across a network by FTP. How you do it depends on your situation, the amount of data to be saved, your available hardware, and even the value of the data to you. Some other options include USB flash devices, external hard drives, even adding another internal drive, as well as burning one or more discs. But burning discs requires either multiple drives or enough memory to load Knoppix completely into RAM. An alternative way to burn to disc if you don't have the memory or multiple drives would be to use s smaller distro such as Puppy Linux or DSL.