test machine no longer boots into windos xp

[mailman42]

I helped a friends son get knoppix working yesterday afternoon. In the BIOS, I had to turn off "power management" to get knoppix 3.1 working.

Before I touched tha machine, windos xp was working. After I left, my friends son was browsing the web with knoppix, and like sit. ;-)

This morning, when he attempted to boot into windos xp, his machine freezes.

I need to head over there tomorrow, to try and see what is going on.

Any tips, ideas, suggestions, for things to look for.

Thanks

[god]

use the XP repair disk....

[mailman42]

Okay. I don't deal with windos, but I don know they have the real install discs, not the major computer places who give a "repair" cd.

Do you mean re-install? Or what?

Thanks.[/quote]

[god]

all you should have to do, as long as you had reset the bios, is insert the XP disk that they have. It is the install disc, and the repair disk in one. Reboot, and then select the "repair" option. In my experiance, they will not lose any files or information. If during the repair process it says "cannot find xxxxxx" look at the thing it cant find and try and figure out what it is... if it is a sound driver, insert the soundcard cd....ect...

[mailman42]

all you should have to do, as long as you had reset the bios, is insert the XP disk that they have. It is the install disc, and the repair disk in one. Reboot, and then select the "repair" option. In my experiance, they will not lose any files or information. If during the repair process it says "cannot find xxxxxx" look at the thing it cant find and try and figure out what it is... if it is a sound driver, insert the soundcard cd....ect...

Thanks. I printed this out, and will take with me tomorrow.

[god]

no prob.... i hope it helps

[aay]

I have seen posts about this happening several times in this forum. What is the deal here? Does this happen on every XP machine or are there specific conditions that cause it. Clearly one MS "feature" that is a real pain in the ass for some people.

[Dave_Bechtel]

--This is one reason more people are investigating Linux, or at least alternatives to MS. With every "upgrade" of the Windoze OS, MS gets more and more evil and resource-hungry. I've heard that XP eats 128Meg of RAM just after BOOTING. WTF??? Linux still works just fine on my P233MMX with 160Meg of RAM. I also use Knoppix frequently on P166 and P300 laptops with 96Meg, 128Meg and 164Meg of RAM.

--My "fast" computer (AMD Duron 900MHz, 196Meg) runs W98SE, SuSE 7.3, and Knoppix. I stick with W98 for a reason - it works fine for my needs. I only recently started getting experience with Win-ME, and already it's a PITA. MS tried to do away with DOS-mode at boot, and I have to hack around it to re-enable things. (F8 at bootup does wonders if you're in a hurry and don't want to screw around with booting from a floppy.)

--I wouldn't run W95 if you paid me anymore, 98 is worth the upgrade - I've gotten it running (and stable!) on a 486-dx3-75MHz with 16Meg of RAM, albeit with a 200Meg perm swapfile. Win-ME is still based on the 98 kernel, and I see no compelling reason to "upgrade" to it, except possibly for driver support. (ME can use my 32-bit Cardbus PCMCIA cards, 98 can't.) But that's only ONE SINGLE CASE so far. Win-ME crashes just as frequently as 98 does.

--But I digress. Pretty much the only thing I use W98 for these days is to check my Juno free email and watch DvD's, and maybe play a few games. I've even taken to rebooting into Knoppix for Web browsing (with Opera) - it's FASTER under Linux!

--IMHO, it's just a matter of time b4 the "need" for Windoze goes away. MS is clamping down on the consumer with restrictive EULAs that are mixed in with SECURITY UPDATES, for Pete's sake. They're *desperate.* And I for one will be glad to see them diminish in power - it's about time somebody handed them their ass.



I have seen posts about this happening several times in this forum. What is the deal here? Does this happen on every XP machine or are there specific conditions that cause it. Clearly one MS "feature" that is a real pain in the ass for some people.

[god]

if i do not turn my computer all the way off and let it sit for a few seconds between knoppix and xp, i get a bunch of nvidia driver errors, the computer is really slow, and laggy....

[fyfong]

I tried KNOPPIX on a win2k laptop and a winnt/win2k desktop. Now with my desktop, I cannot boot winnt or win2k back. It said "Operating System not found". I boot win2k back up just fine on my laptop. :? :( :roll: :x :cry:

Sound like I am not the only one with the problem. What's up with that?

[aay]

I'd still like to know the conditions under which this problem arises. Clearly it doesn't happen on alll XP/NT/W2K machines. I showed someone Knoppix the other day on an XP machine and it had no problem. Maybe this is hardware related. I seem to remember Dell's being particularly susceptible to this problem. Anyone know the answer to this?

I'm really like Dave Bechtel. I really don't use Windows anymore so I don't know myself. I only use a version of Win 98 that I run from Win4Lin.

Thanks

[fyfong]

Funny thing you mentioned Dell. I ran into this problem with my old Dell Dimension P2 desktop. But then my work Dell Latitude CPx P3 laptop is fine. Though I probably not going to run Knoppix on the laptop again. At least not until someone can tell what the cause of this problem.

I think Knoppix is great and all. Just hope someone can figure this one out soon.

[yazdzik]

Dear Friends,

There are specific bios wherein one can allow boot from a drive, or not, as well as arrange the order of the drives.
One has to be careful, as Dell allows both, thus, not only must the drive order be correct in the boot order, but the drive checked as well.

There are some bios that if the drive from which the boot is selected, I remember deskpro was like this, that it will not boot at all, thus if one has CDROM first, and nothing is in there, one has to find a bootable cdrom. One can always check in the bios, after shutting down knoppix, to make sure that the hard drive is both checked amd first. Of course, this means that after every change from a cd OS to the hard drive one, there is the extra step.

XP cds have a repair console, which works well, but, there is no reason to beleive that if one went to the bios first, the order could be reverted to hd first. One should try this before repair, i e, reboot, use whatever the boot function keyis, set to boot from hd, and see if the "complete" OS boots, without errors, as XP eats a lot of RAM, and, if the ram is not free at boot up, there is usually something missing.

One ought, then, after booting from hd, boot into safe mode to check all drivers are correct, although there is no reason for the driver to come unbound by running aother OS from a cd, unless the cd is not correctly cabled.

Finally, if repair is necessary, one ought ot note what happened, as it may be that the kid decided to enable write functions to an ntfs drive?
Most important is to make sure that the OS disk for Windows is a real OS disk and not a "restore disk," as I have seen them inappropriately labled, and, obviously, the restore disk is a mirror of the new hd, which would wipe the drive. Repair is not the same as restore, but a few companies, including compaq, have yet to figure this out. Thus, only the repair option on a real XP OS cd is of any help to you.

Any problems, please write back, with the model of pc, bios version,

Best wishes,
Yazdzik

[aay]

So the solution is to reverse any changes made to the bios boot order after finishing with knoppix? Sounds almost too easy, but it's certainly worth trying/remembering.

[yazdzik]

Dear Friends,
I have been trying since reading the post to replicate the problem, and have yet to be able so to do. Since nothing is written to the hard drive(hda1) there is no relationship between the knoppix problem and a change in the hd. However, if Windows does not shut down correctly, there is a question of paging file issues. Paging is part of the OS, and dumps stuff out of the physical memory into the page file, which you can see on the root of "c", by the way. Now, if some critical setting were left in the physical memory, and windows did not save some setting, then Knoppix were to use the physical memory as its swap, as it indeed does, there is a remote, and a very remote possibility that something necessary to windows remembering settings might be changed, although this would involve a terrible malfunction, or careless shutting down. The question is, when windows is not propertly shut down, were does the restore seat. If in the physical memory, then Knoppix would, of course, disturb the windows settings. Still, such a thing would not normally create anything other than a forgotten margin or language setting. Thus, it sounds a lot like a plain old windows problem.

Now, can someone please tell me why me knoppix does not have flash in the browers? That is a problem.

Best,
Martin

[zipslack]

Ran into this problem with a Dell GX260....unplug the power cable for a few seconds and then plug it back in and boot. Try this BEFORE using the rescue disk and possibly re-formatting your machine.

[aay]

unplug the power cable for a few seconds and then plug it back in and boot.

This worked? I wonder why.

[Dave_Bechtel]

--My suspicion is that the machine has a buggy BIOS.



unplug the power cable for a few seconds and then plug it back in and boot.

This worked? I wonder why.

[Nick]

I have used Knoppix on a varity of M$ OS (NT, 2K) and a varity of machines (DELL included) with no problems.

Now, I wonder with XP if it could be to do with this hardware inventory thing that they built in. Could it (would it??) also take readings from the state of BIOS at initial install, and then after it being changed to use Knoppix somehow confuses it on boot as to something has changed but it doesn't know what?

Just a guess, but a very Microsoftian sort of problem one comes to expect once the solution/cause is found.

Nick

[Bluethunder]

Ever since I ran Knoppix, my XP runs really slow...I'm talking extremely slow. It's chunky, and when I try to listen to MP3's in XP, they are chunky as well. I would be using knoppix, except it doesn't support my sound/modem...

[god]

this MAY help with that....

Turn your computer off, remove the plug from the wall, and press and hold the power button on the front of the computer for about 5-10 seconds... replug and fire it up. Addapt this as needed, but the idea is to drain any residual power from the RAM... this works on dell and gateway, and i believe a few other systems.... worked for me a time or two....

[Bluethunder]

Hmmm, I'll try that...will post back with results.

[Bluethunder]

Nothing...Still runs slow as scheisse...

:'(

And my sister just asassinated my sound card...

[Dave_Bechtel]

--Have you considered that it may have *nothing* to do with Knoppix? When's the last time you ran scandisk, and defragged your HD?

--Also, I highly recommend Norton System Works, or at least Norton Utilities 2002. Best way that I've found to keep the system running right.


Nothing...Still runs slow as scheisse...

:'(

And my sister just asassinated my sound card...

[SaS]

i have the same troble with knoppix 3.1 on win 98!
i fix it by changing bios settings to default

[j.drake]

FWIW, I have no problem going back and forth between Knoppix and WindowsXP on my HP Pavilion.

OTOH, I don't get full access to my C: drive. See http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3936

[dunois]

Hello I'm new to this board and Knoppix.
A friend has recently turned me on to it and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.....EXCEPT I was showing another friend on his new Dell P4 XP machine how great it was and after loading Knoppix (it loaded fine and there was alot of OOOH and AHHHH'ing) and trying to get back to XP when it rebooted the machine just powered up....no signal from the machine to the monitor. I'm thinking I've just ruined his PC and saying "I've never seen that before" didn't help.
After a series of powerdowns and powerups..and still nothing. I powered it down all the way...UNPLUGED IT..and kept my finger on the power button for about 30 seconds (I've used this on some laptops...the rational is that it drains the capasitor...not sure if that is true but it worked on the laptops) and well IT WORKED!!! XP came back and the gods of microsoft were happy again.
Well I got to keep my friend...no major overhaul of his computer but it definatly put a fright in me and looking at this section of the message board (A GREAT BOARD BY THE WAY) I just thought I'd put my little story in on what happened and what I did to "fix" it....

[aay]

Hello I'm new to this board and Knoppix.
A friend has recently turned me on to it and it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.....EXCEPT I was showing another friend on his new Dell P4 XP machine how great it was and after loading Knoppix (it loaded fine and there was alot of OOOH and AHHHH'ing) and trying to get back to XP when it rebooted the machine just powered up....no signal from the machine to the monitor. I'm thinking I've just ruined his PC and saying "I've never seen that before" didn't help.
After a series of powerdowns and powerups..and still nothing. I powered it down all the way...UNPLUGED IT..and kept my finger on the power button for about 30 seconds (I've used this on some laptops...the rational is that it drains the capasitor...not sure if that is true but it worked on the laptops) and well IT WORKED!!! XP came back and the gods of microsoft were happy again.
Well I got to keep my friend...no major overhaul of his computer but it definatly put a fright in me and looking at this section of the message board (A GREAT BOARD BY THE WAY) I just thought I'd put my little story in on what happened and what I did to "fix" it....

Yeah this trick seems to work, and it seems to be needed for a lot of Dells. Glad that it worked for you but Dude ain't getting a Dell :-)