Tried lots of things ... but won't boot

I have a Dell Dimension PC. I burnt the EN iso image and setup the CMOS to boot from CD before the HD. However, although it seems to attempt to boot from the CD, after a little CD activity it moves to the HD. I tried a boot floppy, as instructed in the FAQ, and I then get a message along the lines "Debian .... boot failure". I downloaded the iso image twice, and I have burnt the CD twice.

Any suggestions ?

Have you tried the CD on another computer? That will tell you whether you have a duff cd, which is the first thing you want to eliminate.

Is the CD readable in that boot drive? I have an older DVD-ROM which doesn't reliably read CD-RWs, so I have to stick with CD-R if I want to boot from this drive (fewer compatibility issues). I wouldn't be too surprised if really old CD-ROMs couldn't read either.

I don't have another pc to try this with (so maybe I shouldn't be experimenting anyway !!!).
I am using a CD-R, and under Windows I can read the CD ... which is where I got the boot.img and floppy creator when I tried that route.

Maybe there is something about my CD creation program ?

I used Easy-CD Creator from Roxio, with the option 'Disk-at-Once'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by David

I used Easy-CD Creator from Roxio, with the option 'Disk-at-Once'.

---

...but the other issue is: did you burn it correctly, as an image -- not data? Look at the disk under Windows. There should be a directory on it called Knoppix, among other things. If all that shows is a single 700MB file, then you burned it incorrectly.

There is an option with CD Creator labeled something like "burn image"; I don't remember, exactly, since I have not used that bloatware for about 2 years -- but if you burn the disc as data, it won't work, except as a backup of the ISO image itself.

I checked the CD as you suggested and I can see the following in directory knoppix....

Volume in drive E is KNOPPIX
Volume Serial Number is 6902-0335
Directory of E:\KNOPPIX

. <DIR> 06-06-03 6:37p .
.. <DIR> 04-25-03 8:37p ..
KNOPPIX 725,032,363 06-06-03 6:06p KNOPPIX
KNOPPI~8 TXT 10,162 05-16-03 7:23p KNOPPIX-FAQ-
KNOPP~10 TXT 10,616 05-16-03 7:23p KNOPPIX-FAQ-
KNOPP~12 TXT 12,097 05-16-03 7:23p KNOPPIX-FAQ-
KNOPP~14 TXT 11,894 05-16-03 7:23p KNOPPIX-FAQ-
KNOPP~16 TXT 9,767 05-16-03 7:24p KNOPPIX-FAQ-
KNOPP~18 TXT 11,378 05-16-03 7:24p KNOPPIX-FAQ.
READM~20 TXT 2,530 08-24-01 2:15a README_Secur
BACKG~22 JPG 159,911 02-06-03 10:09p background.j
BOOT CAT 2,048 06-06-03 6:38p boot.cat
BOOT IMG 1,474,560 06-06-03 1:48a boot.img
INDEX~28 HTM 10,462 02-08-03 2:53a index.html
INDEX~30 HTM 12,440 02-08-03 2:53a index_dk.htm
INDEX~32 HTM 9,983 02-08-03 2:53a index_en.htm
INDEX~34 HTM 15,234 02-08-03 2:53a index_es.htm
INDEX~36 HTM 11,954 02-08-03 2:53a index_fr.htm
INDEX~38 HTM 13,561 02-08-03 2:53a index_it.htm
INDEX~40 HTM 13,768 04-11-03 12:08a index_nl.htm
INDEX~42 HTM 14,683 02-08-03 2:53a index_ru.htm
KNOBLIND BAT 5,746 03-26-03 3:45p knoblind.bat
KNOPP~46 TXT 7,231 05-17-03 3:28a knoppix-chea
KNOPP~48 GIF 13,652 02-06-03 10:08p knoppix-head
MD5SUMS 2,736 06-06-03 6:38p md5sums
MKFLOPPY BAT 27 06-05-01 5:17a mkfloppy.bat
RAWRI~54 TXT 1,669 06-05-01 5:17a rawrite2-rea
RAWRITE2 EXE 17,863 06-05-01 5:17a rawrite2.exe
WEB-B~58 GIF 167 02-07-03 5:04a web-backgrou
27 file(s) 726,888,502 bytes
2 dir(s) 0 bytes free

It therefore appears to be valid.... mmmhhh

Try creating a boot floppy, and boot from it at first. If it boots corectly, it's something wrong with what you wrote on the cd.

The first 3 Knoppix CDs I burned booted to a black screen with a mouse cursor.

Then I burned the fourth CD at a slower rate. Then it all booted just fine.

For some CD burners, when you burn near the maximum capacity of the disk (700 MB), they don't quite make it at high speeds.

What version of windows are you running ?

I mean the files shouldn't be called KNOPP~12 TXT etc..

What are they called when you look at it from windows GUI?

David,

Just found out about Knoppix yesterday (6/12/03) and had the same problem trying to get Knoppix to boot on my HP pavilion ze5170 notebook. Initially, I thought it was the CD, but the CD worked fine on other computers I tested. Also, the CD boots up fine in a VMware session on the same computer.

Later on in my Knoppix exploration, I was able to successfully boot into commandline mode on the ze5170. The next thing I plan to try is to modify the MBR using Findpart to show only one partition. Right now I have 9 partitions for testing purposes.