Victory!!! Bad cd problem cured !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Im writing to you from KNOPPIX 6.2 CD after leaving a pile of bad CDs in the trash. Id determined after being unable to use a Flash boot (BIOS doesnt support USB boot on this old computer) that I had no choice but to solve the problem, if it meant wasting a whole box of discs, then so be it. One MUST follow the process of download, verify with MD5 before proceeding. MUST. not an option. Then one must realize that the goal is NOT to make a CD to run Knoppix, it is a job of making a (more or less "copy") of a master disk somewhere else. That "somewhere else" is on a mirror server somewhere distant. Therein lies the answer. The problem is that the local disk is made in Windows, known for every kind of software failure known to man, which is why many of us want Linux in the first place - IT WORKS! As others have, I have been getting CDs burned that result in a startup that hangs with no option but a hard re-boot. The disk just goes quiet, indicating it cant read anything. Using testCD proved it. There was data missing, therefore it could not proceed to load. So the question, hardware, software or both? The hardware is generally stable, Windows is known to crash left and right, so it is suspect. But what about Windows? I tried options in the CD burner program, tried running the CD drive tests to verify transfer rate, tried a slow speed burn (which makes NO sense,,,) to no avail. I removed the CD drive from the computer and re-seated the electrical connector several times. Connectors are a common failure source. No luck. So, its not a CD recorder problem. I'd noticed between downloading the Knoppix ISOs and manipulating files in Windows, that Windows was not working correctly - network connection errors and file system errors in Explorer. Explorer... known to be a source of an almost infinite number of failures in Windows, so much so that some have written their own file explorer programs. So: 1.) Download the ISO 2.) Download the corresponding MD5 file 3.) download the program to verify the ISO against the MD5 4.) Run provram and ISO verified (good source file) 5.) placed the CD burner software temporary directory in C root drive to ensure enough file system and drive space (may not hurt to defragment the hard drive) 6.) Set the CD burner to "burn single track at once" although another user has noted this should not matter for a data disk, I did it anyway Then the magic -bullet 7.) TURN OFF WINDOWS EXPLORER. From Windows Explorer, hit Ctrl-Alt Del (Windows users are familiar with that key combination!) , close all processes related to Explorer, then Run the CD burner software and burned at high speed. The CD worked the first time, flawlessly. Im using it right now. The problem was not an old computer, or a bad CD drive, it was Windows Explorer, it was interfering with the burn process.

Interesting (though a bit of a difficult read because of the formatting :( )

There seem to be several reasons emerging - in addition to the usual write speed - that can cause the CD to fail.

In the past we've had the writing software, BIOS settings, make of CD drive, Windows Explorer related processes running in the background ...any others?

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Originally Posted by daveca

TURN OFF WINDOWS EXPLORER. From Windows Explorer, hit Ctrl-Alt Del (Windows users are familiar with that key combination!) , close all processes related to Explorer, then Run the CD burner software and burned at high speed. The CD worked the first time, flawlessly. Im using it right now. The problem was not an old computer, or a bad CD drive, it was Windows Explorer, it was interfering with the burn process.

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Hmm - I didn't even know this was possible. AFAIK, "Explorer" is THE basic process of Windows; if you shut it down, away goes Windows itself. Which burner program are you using, and what processes did you terminate? Also, which version of Winders was responsible for creating the trouble?

Anyway, congratulations on getting to the cause (or around it, I guess) and thank you for sharing the results with the community.

Best Regards,
Krishna :mrgreen:
p.s. There are some fixes mentioned elsewhere in these forums for BIOS-related boot issues, if you want to use flash. Let us know if you decide to pursue it, and enjoy! in the meantime.

Explorer is not the basic process of Windows, the Windows Kernel is (kernel32 or NTos, whatever they're properly called). If Explorer was the basic process, then termnating it would have killed windows off and the CD burner wouldn't have worked. Going back to Windows 3.1 - it worked, but was still DOS-Shell. In fact, one could invoke Shell from there. It worked, but not for those without computer experience, specifically, with knowledge of how to dig around the file system and find things.

After MS started packing Explorer in place of Filemanager.exe, it all started going downhill. I think Filemanager is still packed in the Windows directory, even in XP. Exploder (what we term Explorer in Windows-hating circles) is not only a ( DOS, quasi-DOS) file handling routine, it more or less automates Windows so that someone with no computer experience (read- no knowledge of DOS operation) can operate most Windows functions with a mouse on the Desktop. Nice, but Exploder steals a great deal of memory (as does any Windows program) and has its tentacles all over the OS, usually with bad results.

Just terminate Explorer and see what else suddenly goes dark. The programs are still there, but have to use Alt-Tab to switch between them. Worse yet, many/most programs, especially Explorer take memory when starting and dont want to give it up, thus the advent of Garbage Collector. Some programs like Word Perfect won't terminate, and hide in the background with 10's of MB of memory allocated that System can't use. thus- why Windows crashes.

Ctrl Alt Del invokes the Task Manager window, which contains tabs for seeing which programs are operating, processes (programs/executables hiding in the background) and how much memory they gobble up, network usage and et-cetera. The processes tab (second tab) is useful for killing User processes (right-click- end process/tree) to free up memory and speed up the machine. These processes are launched, and memory consumed, each time a program is started by the User, or started at boot up. It can be enough memory to cause the machine to respond slowly, or not at all. Find every process started by the current user (admin, guest, whatever username is current log- in) and kill them one by one. No problem. Killing off system processes can crash the OS.

There are two options for killing a process 1.) the process 2.) it and all processeses associated. When Explorer is killed, the Desktop disappears and suddenly one has no "point and click" method for operating the File System. No problem, for programs and files can be browsed for, and launched, from the first Task Manager tab, it's just more like Win 3.1 than XP. Instead of having all the Program short cuts on Desktop, one has to either find the Desktop folder (c:/documentsandsettings/user/desktop... or whatever the path is) or go into the Program Files folder (c:/programfiles/programfolder...) and run the .exe from there.

With Exploder and all its memory-grabbing, octopus tentacle processes terminated, I launched Roxio 6.x CD burner and burned 12x speed (it determined that speed was max after hardware tests). This was after going through all the setup menus in Roxio to alow it to test the drive for read/write speeds. As a result, Knoppix is working GREAT. instant everything. CD latency is NOTHING compared to Windows goofing off in the background. Flashboot would be better but I haven't figured out how to do that yet without a USB-boot BIOS option. "knoppix toram" didn't work, I don't know why. Knoppix has loaded every time, except for one where the external monitor seemed to hang it, and the USB keyboard/mouse didn't work. Connecting them after boot up seemed to solve those hiccupps. Nice to have a 32 inch monitor! LOVE THE PENGUIN!!!!!!!! PS I did format the first post, dont know what happened to formatting after I sent the post.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by daveca

Explorer is not the basic process of Windows, the Windows Kernel is (kernel32 or NTos, whatever they're properly called). If Explorer was the basic process, then termnating it would have killed windows off and the CD burner wouldn't have worked.

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Right, that IS what happened back in the days of Win 95/98 etc. Guess I never tried it with XP, but good to know what you pointed out - thanks!

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Flashboot would be better but I haven't figured out how to do that yet without a USB-boot BIOS option. "knoppix toram" didn't work, I don't know why.

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Try this sometime: put the flash drive in and run the flash install utility if you have not done that yet, then reboot and

Code:

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knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1

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That works for me, but your drive numberings may differ.

Cheers!
Krishna :mrgreen:

flashboot solved. WAY too easy once I thought about it. The key is philosophy - "THINK LINUX, FORGET WINDOWS"

I'm not clear about how that allows you to boot the flash drive.:confused: Did you use PLoP or some other mechanism to boot it? Or did you just wipe the hd and install, or do a "poor man's install"?

Krishna :mrgreen:

plop. Theres no updated BIOS for this Compaq that allows USB boot and thats odd, its a 2006 computer, not that old. BTW, inexperienced users, be CAREFUL with Plop, it can help you do major damage in the blink of an eye like taking out an entire hard drive at once. Get Linux working, THEN take revenge on Window$...