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Thread: Random CD-boot startup hangs and partition salvation

  1. #11
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    Might be worth pointing out here that my HDDs are SATA drives, so everything hda is sda.

    OK enough with the post-count boosting.

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    Point is, I'm still locking up. Not at boot any more mostly, but is this normal? For it to lock up while doing, say, a basic file transfer to a WLAN network client?
    Lockups are not normal. But neither is someone, particularly a new user, getting a wireless network working! And in my experience even in Windows wireless can be a bit touchy, for me it's very dependent on computer position, and may work fine in one spot and not at all an inch away. So if your "lockups" are all wireless ralated than I would question if it's a software lockup or if the transfer is just stopping for any of a number of wireless issues. Consider trying a wired connection and see if you still get hangs.

    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    Just now I've got all the desktop icons, but no taskbar (or whatever the equivalent is called here) whatsoever, can't do anything.
    Where did it go? Was it there when you finished booting? Try clicking or right clicking on the desktop and see if that brings up a menu.

    I can't make more space on your notebook for you. It's not clear what your file name issues are. Yes, I agree that the Linux world makes it hard to find documantation. Heck, even the names of most commands are cryptic. The good news is that the information you seek is very likely "out there". The bad new is that there is a lot of other and bad information out there too, making what you want harder to find.

    You still seem to have several options. If you can move files to the notebook you may be able to back then up there with software you know better, the delete them and use the recovered space for more. Since this sounds like a desktop system that is giving you problems you might consider adding a hard drive. Knoppix can easily format it and move files to it from your existing drive(s). And it may well also be that Knoppix can fix whatever your problem is, we just don't now enough about what is wrong with the windows system to tell you how to fix it.

  3. #13
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    Yeah, sorry, I'm certainly not taking it out on you--as a longtime forum helper of my own (my IT strengths lie elsewhere, I promise), I know how irritating it is to put up with someone banging his head against a wall. Give me a virtual wall, and I will happily bang my virtual head against it...

    I'd really like to resolve the lockup issue. If I can, I'm sure I can sort out file copy/archive problems one way or another. And I look at this whole fiasco as a great entry into the Linux world. But if I have to boot Knoppix 100 times a day--as I have thus far--without being able to get much done, well, it's a safe bet I'm not becoming a convert yet.

    It is worth pointing out that I have had this sucker lock up at every conceivable point. The taskbar example I mentioned, it simply never appeared at all. Or rather, it was there, but there were no icons on it of any kind. And clicking anywhere did nothing. (Sometimes the lockup includes the mouse, assuming we get to a GUI, sometimes no.)

    How does one "step through" a Knoppix boot, watching for baddies, as one can do in a pre-XP setup? I just feel completely stuck--one might master cheat codes and command lines in a relaxed and experimental situation, but when nothing's working (and I'm not talking about my partitions here), one code is as useless as another it seems... Surely there must be a simple this-worked/this-didn't watch setup? I can't find it if so.

    I'm fairly certain from the number of problems I've had lately in Windows and today in Knoppix that I have a hardware problem. The whole point of the reinstall I began 14 hours ago was to find it, from a clean software install. Now I can't find it with TWO clean installs!

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    How does one "step through" a Knoppix boot, watching for baddies, as one can do in a pre-XP setup?
    At the boot prompt type in knoppix expert and answer the questions as the boot process steps through all the steps.

    Your very random seeming hangs are not making much sense with my past experience (when I get hangs they are very repeatable). I keep wondering about if there is some issue reading that CD that is causing a problem. If not an issue of a high speed burn then maybe something as simple as a dusty lense? If you have a 700 meg CDRW media available you might try burning to that; I've found that since the gain contol is different for reading CDRW that it sometimes helps drives that have read issues with normal CDR media.And although I understand the main reason for running Knoppix at this moment is to recover the fialed system, you might want to try Knoppix on another system. That should help give you more experience and see Knoppix on a more reliable system. Learning a new OS on a system that is giving you problems and that you are trying to recover from a problem on is not the optimum way to be introduced to an OS or to gain the skills needed to recover data.

  5. #15
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    Instead of the CD, what about a more fundamental problem? Like, say, an overheating processor (I have more success from a 5+ minute cold boot than I do from a warm), or a memory stick gone bad? Any idea whether Knoppix's behavior grows more random in such conditions? I will use the expert switch next startup, and see how it goes...

    Another interesting point--I am at the moment successfully copying files to the laptop (time to kill! look out!), but I was going to at least move files around between my "damaged" partitions so as to potentially be able to create new ones... Knoppix won't let me write to any of the partitions it so generously displays as intact. Would this be related to what happens when I open the burning software, and can only add shortcuts to the mounted sda and sdb drives, and not to their contents? Or is this one of those permission tricks I have yet to understand?

  6. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    Instead of the CD, what about a more fundamental problem? Like, say, an overheating processor (I have more success from a 5+ minute cold boot than I do from a warm), or a memory stick gone bad? Any idea whether Knoppix's behavior grows more random in such conditions? I will use the expert switch next startup, and see how it goes...
    Sure, I would expect Knoppix to behave more randomly if memory or the CPU or memory were flaking out, wouldn't you? If you want to do a quick test you can run memtest86 right from the knoppix boot CD. Just type in memtest at the boot prompt.

    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    Or is this one of those permission tricks I have yet to understand?
    By default, Knoppix opens partitions as read-only. This is intentional, based on Knoppix being a common way to intriduce new users to Linux and wanting a Live-CD enviroment that will first of all do no harm.

    You can change to read/write mounting in one of at least two ways. From a command prompt you can use the mount command (see man mount for details on all of the options). Or you can right-click on the hda1 icon (or other partition icon icon) and select the actions... sub-menu rather than just opening it with a left click.

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
    Sure, I would expect Knoppix to behave more randomly if memory or the CPU or memory were flaking out, wouldn't you?
    Well, yes, I would expect any computer to, but then I never had to boot Windoze 10 times to get a good boot, either. I guess what I'm asking is, is this more log-friendly, diagnostic-friendly system more prone to random behavior under such conditions? Is it more zero-tolerance?

    Is the memtest switch better than the same in DOS/Win, which often fails completely to detect bad memory?

    I will have a go at the drive mounting--which I think I'm finally understanding, more or less--when the copying finishes...

    Thank you again for all your help. You've been tremendous, and I owe you a beer.

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    Is the memtest switch better than the same in DOS/Win, which often fails completely to detect bad memory?
    I know nothing about a "switch" for DOS or Windows. It's the same memtest as memtest86, a very highly regarded memory test program (there might be a slightly never version of memtest86 out, I'm not really sure but some some comments about it, but I expect that's really splitting hairs, I would trust this version. If you would rather track down the latest and greatest version of memtest86 and put it on it's on bootable CD or floppy feel free. Memtest86 does not run from DOS or Windows, it loads it's own code into the computer and runs that, giving it a lot more freedom in moving around in memory and checking everything.

  9. #19
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    Once again my bad... Was confusing it with something else entirely. Ran it for 15 passes, no errors. I did open up the box earlier this morning and reseat the memory and blow out the processor heatsink. On the next boot I managed to burn an entire DVD before crash!

    But I'd say nine out of ten boots still aren't getting me past startup. Still no pattern to the freezes, either. If it makes it to the splash screen--which it manages about eight out of ten times, I'd say--it often freezes on the "system services" or "peripherals" steps, but again, not reproducibly.

    I'm fairly sure it's not a CD-reading problem, as I have two DVD drives, one virtually new, and they fail about equally often. (Though most of my attempts have been off the ROM, to keep the R/RW free for burning...)

    I'm out of ideas. I'm just going to keep starting until I get to usable state, and try to burn everything I can until I give up.

    Unless anyone has any other ideas...

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