linux cds not booting, but windows are!!

hello all
i have an asus pb5 deluxe board,
i have absolutely no clue what is happening here but this is the problem:
any linux-based CD boot system is not working (knoppix mainly, then i tried some other linux-based bootable cds, like rescue disks and some other linux system)
the system actually boots off the cdrom, but then in the loading file process i get some error about not being able to load the kernel or something of that sort (i will post exact knoppix error in a bit)

ironically, when i put in my windows setup cd (and some other windows based bootable disks), they boot just fine

the boot order and all thta is correct and the boot process from the cd/dvd starts properly, but on the linux based systems, in the first inital stage, starts loading the files then fails
any clues??

this is the error am getting from the knoppix live cd (4):
"welcome ...
scanning for usb/firewire ... done
can't find knoppix filesystem, sorry. Dropping you to a very limited shell.
Reset to quit"

from the macosx86 kalyway release boot i get: system config file /com.apple.boot.plist not found

i get similar errors from all linux based boots

Quote:

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Originally Posted by karxix

can't find knoppix filesystem, sorry. Dropping you to a very limited shell.......

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Although I run Knopix on several different computers and optical drives, CD and DVD, I just don't have this problem, ever. But I have seen several reports of it happening on these forums (no one ever seems to come back and report what they determined the cause to be, if they do ever resolve it). Still, my first thought is that you have a bad burn. Did you burn the ISO at low speed (which is absolutely critical for reliable operation in many cases)? Did you let your burning software do a verification pass (and, obviously, did it get good results)? I would suggest (assuming that you have verified the md5 checksum of the ISO file) that you do another burn at low speed (4x) and that you use a different brand of media (just to help rule out marginal media). Assuming that you made the previous burn on write-once media, if you have suitable RW media I would strongly suggest using that in this test, both to avoid further media waste and to change the read gain of the drive when trying to boot, which might give you a completely different result.

Please let us know what you learn.

I also can't resist mentioning that I recently saw someone post that he was also having booting problems. He casually mentioned that during the burn process he got an error, but that didn't seem to in any way register to him as a likely source of his problem. So I guess we have to start spelling out, if you got an error during the burn, or if the verification pass failed, or if the md5 checksum of the ISO file indicated that you have a bad download, your expectation of the disc booting might just be too high.

as much as everything you mention is 100% true and makes sense,
the problem is that i have previously booted from this cd and it has worked on other pcs
and also, several linux-based boot system are not working only on my desktop, they work everywhere else
but a non linux system (like the windows setup cd) just runs fine!

it's driving me nuts :S
the more annoying is that these have worked before on this pc, i have no clue what could be the cause since i dont recall changing anything

Quote:

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Originally Posted by karxix

.......the problem is that i have previously booted from this cd and it has worked on other pcs
and also, several linux-based boot system are not working only on my desktop, they work everywhere else.....

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I'm not quite sure what you are saying here, but if you are saying that the burns were done at high speed, that they worked on other systems means nothing at all. High speed burns are marginal, they well might work on one system but not on another. See this thread and this thread. People even have high speed disks that they think are working, but in fact are causing an awful lot of rereads and so Knopix seems to load much slower than it should. See here. As to why this might be true with Linux but not true or less obvious with other systems, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with how each system does error correction, but I don't know that. Why doesn't really matter, I can show that it is true and I do all of my burns at low speed. I want any error correction built into the data to protect me from disc rot years down the road, not to be used right away and hide marginal burn issues on day 1.

As to what you did to your system since the disc worked, maybe you used it. Maybe you exposed it to air and perhaps even a bit of dust. Different drives in different machines may well respond to different marginal burns differently, and any single drive may get more sensitive as it ages and as the optics pick up grime (realize just how critical reading individual bits on a CD or DVD is).

Please let us know if a new low speed burn changes anything. Since you seem to have access to different computers, you might even make the low speed burns on different systems and see if the different sources behave differently on the computer (which would seem to rule out any issue in the Knoppix code itself and further point to the burning as the issue).

i will be getting a new reader in the next couple of days for a friend
am gonna give it a try on my system and update you with what goes on