Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 19

Thread: Random CD-boot startup hangs and partition salvation

  1. #1
    Junior Member registered user
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    14

    Random CD-boot startup hangs and partition salvation

    I've edited this post to better reflect the current state of affairs... The original text is below. You may want to skip to post #2, though!

    -----------------------------------------------------

    Hi, let me start by saying I'm really sorry, because this is going to be as dumb as you've ever gotten. I know, because I've been looking all over this forum for some guidance, and everyone's higher up the food chain than I...

    I am trying to start Knoppix 3.9 on a Pentium 4 with some hard drive partition problems. (All partitions are visible using TestDisk in Windows 2000, but I can't get the partition table / MBR to rebuild correctly, at least not so far... so here I am.)

    I've never so much as looked at a Linux screen in my life. So I'm just going to describe what I get, and hopefully someone will be able to drag me up a rung or two...

    So I put the ISO CD in my drive, boot successfully, hit RETURN as instructed, much loading and verifying of hardware, one "FATAL" error in the Kernel ("modprobe: could not read /lib/modules/2.6.11/kernel/drivers/input/evdev.ko : not a directory") twice, but then it carries on, says "Starting X11" I believe is the last bit of text, then I get what I presume is a splash screen, earth + spaceman + what looks like a very large play/RW/FF bar, and a lovely spacevoice tells me that it's "initializing startup sequence".

    Sometimes it stops here, sometimes it carries on to a smaller version of that screen on top of it, with a series of icons across the bottom that flash in sequence--I assume this is doing what it says!

    But it stops, every time. Right now it's stuck on "Loading the Desktop". It's not what I would call a reproducible error, except in so far as it's an error every time...

    Okay, well, naturally, to spite me, that time I got all the way through to a desktop. Looks most enticing! Was even able to hover over a few icons and see what they might one day do for me!

    But trying to open a terminal--I'm trying to follow the steps in this thread to rebuild my goods--it just hung.

    And on this restart, back to square one...

    Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'll chase links and read volumes, but--this is key--I have to be able to understand what I'm reading. Keep in mind that first sentence .

    Thanks for your assistance.

  2. #2
    Junior Member registered user
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    14
    Well... I don't really understand. Now I've been working for 15 minutes, so I guess it's time to change my questions.

    1) If it's freezing up at random points, does that indicate a hardware problem? (Everything in Windows starts/runs OK, but I was doing a reinstall as the first step toward a diagnosis of an occasional bluescreen/much program shutdown problem.) Or is there some command line I can run to find out? Is that error message significant?

    2) I've now worked through the thread I mentioned above--gpart doesn't seem to help, but QTParted finds everything. If all my partitions are alive and well and happy under QTParted, and Linux can read all my data, is there something I can do to restore that same partition structure so that it's visible to Windows 2K? Or do I just need to burn my data (gigs and gigs worth, mind you), cut my losses, and start over?

    Sorry for the shift of thread focus, but I'm really not trying to be a forum jackass, I promise

  3. #3
    Administrator Site Admin-
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    5,441

    Re: "Initiating startup..." and then...

    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    Hi, let me start by saying I'm really sorry, because this is going to be as dumb as you've ever gotten....
    Not even close to as dumb as we've ever gotten.

    Sounds like you're not quite booting up. It's likely some hardware issue. Knoppix does a pretty good job of hardware detection, but sometimes it just needs a little help (known as "cheat codes") to get the boot process right on some hardware that it doesn't detect right. At least your system seems to be having no problem booting a CD and you burnt the CD as an image. Assuming that you checked the md5 sum or used Bittorrent to download we can be confident that the download was good. And I'm hoping that you burnt the CD at a slow speed (sometimes high speed burns will cause a problem like you describe, particularly since it always doesn't seem to be stopping in the same place). You might want to follow the documentation link at the top of this page and read the wiki information on cheat codes. I would suggest starting with knoppix acpi=off or knoppix nodma or knoppix noscsi or even knoppix nodma noscsi acpi=off. You might even try booting with the failsafe cheat code and seeing how far into the boot process you get.

    Good luck.

  4. #4
    Administrator Site Admin-
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    5,441
    From your new post I rather suspect that you did a high speed burn. If so then burning a new CD at a slow speed will likely give you a much more reliable Knoppix experience.

    Without knowing more about just what is wrong with the hard drive it's hare to say how to fix it or if Knoppox can do it. An alternative to burning tons of media (although backup is a good thing) might be to move the files across a network to another system, and then move them back after you've repartitioned and reformatted.

  5. #5
    Junior Member registered user
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    14
    Hi Harry, thanks for the answer... I will look again at cheat codes, I found it a little overwhelming, but with some pointers like that I should be able to figure out what they're for.

    I should mention that the ISO was burned on another machine. The md5 was verified, so I think the burn is solid. (This machine has never given me a problem burning before, a fairly new laptop...)

    It does not identify the video card, I've noticed... Could you point me to other hardware diagnostics help, assuming I can keep the thing running long enough to check stuff out? (First glance under the menus says there's gotta be some Stuff--very exciting after the Windows Dark Ages I have to say, to be able to actually control my own computer!)

    Between reboots I am still working on the partition rebuild question, too, which no doubt crossed your helpful words in the space known as cyber...

  6. #6
    Administrator Site Admin-
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    5,441
    Quote Originally Posted by randolphtaco
    I should mention that the ISO was burned on another machine. The md5 was verified, so I think the burn is solid. (This machine has never given me a problem burning before, a fairly new laptop...)..
    Burnt at what speed?

  7. #7
    Junior Member registered user
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    14
    More post-cross! Okay I'll type fast...

    I didn't control the burn speed, actually, as the little ISORecorder too doesn't let me. I will reburn in Nero on low speed, and see if that helps.

    Thanks again...

  8. #8
    Administrator Site Admin-
    Join Date
    Apr 2003
    Location
    USA
    Posts
    5,441
    Good luck. The random way that you boot is hanging for you is somethoing I've only seen caused by two read related problems, a high speed burn or DMA on hadware not quite up to it. Since you say you are running 3.9 I don't think that DMA is the issue, as I believe it's back to being off by default (you could try the DMA cheat code to turn it back on). So I rather suspect the speed of the burn is the issue, particularly if you couldn't force it to be a slow burn.

  9. #9
    Junior Member registered user
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    14
    OK. Slow burn completed, been running off that for a while. None of the cheats want to work at all. But things do boot and run better, I guess, off the slow burn--I'm getting more time before (most) lockups. As long as no cheats.

    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?

    Just now I've got all the desktop icons, but no taskbar (or whatever the equivalent is called here) whatsoever, can't do anything.

    In any case, I'm still stuck--my laptop doesn't have the space to back up everything, the files won't show properly in whatever the CD burning program is called... Is my frustration starting to show?

    I'd love to be able to rebuild my partition table and MBR correctly, reinstall Windows and get out of crash-course mode, but I can't find anything to explain to a total noob like myself how to do that straightforwardly. Linux isn't made to solve Windows problems, fair enough, but I must point out nonetheless, there may be a ton of Linux doc out there on the web, the vast majority of what I've read in my one-day introduction is a real turn-off, badly written and jargon-riddled. I probably just don't know da linx...

    Okay, rant over, plus time to reboot again...

  10. #10
    Junior Member registered user
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    14
    Actually, that's six boots in a row without a useful command...

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Similar Threads

  1. random boots
    By builguito in forum Hdd Install / Debian / Apt
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 07-12-2007, 03:27 AM
  2. mounting writable fat32 partition at startup
    By laughingboy in forum General Support
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 05-13-2005, 02:08 AM
  3. .mcop random-seed
    By blipblipblip in forum General Support
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 10-24-2004, 07:07 PM
  4. HP omnibook 6100 - startup hangs
    By celak in forum Laptops
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 05-25-2004, 04:51 PM
  5. Knoppix hangs at startup with SCSI detection(aic7xxx module)
    By sjoerd in forum Hardware & Booting
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 03-24-2003, 09:11 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  


HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Xeon E3-1220L 16GB RAM No HDD's picture

HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Xeon E3-1220L 16GB RAM No HDD's

$299.00



HP Proliant MicroServer Gen 8 2.3GHz CPU 16GB RAM NO DRIVES/CADDIES INCLUDED picture

HP Proliant MicroServer Gen 8 2.3GHz CPU 16GB RAM NO DRIVES/CADDIES INCLUDED

$179.99



HP ProLiant HSTNS-5151 Micro Server 8GB RAM No Drives/Key/Caddies *READ* picture

HP ProLiant HSTNS-5151 Micro Server 8GB RAM No Drives/Key/Caddies *READ*

$94.99



HPE PROLIANT MICROSERVER GEN10 PLUS MICRO TOWER SERVER - USED picture

HPE PROLIANT MICROSERVER GEN10 PLUS MICRO TOWER SERVER - USED

$550.00



HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Xeon E3-1220L 8GB RAM No HDD's picture

HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Xeon E3-1220L 8GB RAM No HDD's

$229.99



HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen 10 Plus, Xeon E-2224, 16GB DDR4, 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD picture

HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen 10 Plus, Xeon E-2224, 16GB DDR4, 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD

$750.00



ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Intel Xeon E3-1220L V2 2.3GHz CPU 8GB RAM picture

ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Intel Xeon E3-1220L V2 2.3GHz CPU 8GB RAM

$170.00



HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Intel Xeon E3-1220L v2 16GB DDR3 (4) 4TB HDs picture

HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Server Intel Xeon E3-1220L v2 16GB DDR3 (4) 4TB HDs

$399.00



HP ProLiant Microserver Micro Server HSTNS-5151 untested picture

HP ProLiant Microserver Micro Server HSTNS-5151 untested

$75.00



HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus v2 Ultra Micro Tower Server P54644001 picture

HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus v2 Ultra Micro Tower Server P54644001

$849.99