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!

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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.

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 :)

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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....

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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.

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.

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...

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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...)..

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Burnt at what speed?

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...

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.

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...

Actually, that's six boots in a row without a useful command...

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

OK enough with the post-count boosting.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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!

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Originally Posted by randolphtaco

How does one "step through" a Knoppix boot, watching for baddies, as one can do in a pre-XP setup?

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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.

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?

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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...

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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.

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Originally Posted by randolphtaco

Or is this one of those permission tricks I have yet to understand?

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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.

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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?

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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.

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Originally Posted by randolphtaco

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

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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.

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...