boot from .msi image ??????

[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 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.

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.

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.