Built new computer and Live disk won't load

I built my first computer. Asus mother board(p5B) an intel core 2 duo 2.13(6400) and 1 dvd drive as master and a dvd burner as slave. I have 1 hard drive and its set up with a Sata cable. I put the disk in(or any other linux disk) and a screen comes up that says looking for knoppix or looking for mepis and then an error says halted can't load. I have xp on the computer right now. I tried to change the settings for the plug and play OS in the bios but that didn't work. I just tried the knoppix disk again and it said "CAN'T FIND KNOPPIX FILE SYSTEM".

We have seen some issues lately with new hardware, particularly when trying to boot from SATA. But since Knoppix doesn't need a hard disk at all and your SATA seems limited to the HD then I doubt that this is your issue. I suggest making sure that you have covered all of the steps in the downloading faq, particularly checking the md5 sum and slow burning speed (see answer #1 if you don't know where to find it).

thanks I will do some more reading. Maybe I need to change the bios settings. At first I couldn't even load any OS at all until I selected the ram speed in the bios.

Rechecking your BIOS settings is a fine thing to do, particularly if you tried to overclock or crank them up. but "CAN'T FIND KNOPPIX FILE SYSTEM" is an error we often see from discs that were not burnt following all of the tips in the downloading faq, particular the one about high speed burning. To a lesser extent it might be a DMA issue if the boot drive does not support DMA properly, but I don't expect that will be your problem (check any BIOS settings for DMA on the optical drives though). I still recommend following all of the instructions in the downloading faq. This isn't like religion, you can't pick and choose which teachings you want to follow and which you decide are unimportant. And don't skip over steps like the md5 check just because you never did one before.

But i didn't burn any of my Linux disk? I have used them all before and they always worked. The knoppix disk is a 4.0 and it came with a book I bought. i remember I had a bad hardrive and I just used knoppix for a month without turning off my box. maybe the disk is bad now. But that would mean that my mepis and my Ubuntu and knoppix disks all went bad at the same time. I have tried 4 different drives. i know its not a drive problem. I was watching movies and burning with them last night. it could be an evil plot by Mr Gates to get me to buy Vista. Seriously this sucks.

I'm not following what you are saying. are you saying that theses 3 different Linux Live CDs all worked on this same computer as recently as last night, but now none work today on the same computer? iIf so, what changed?

My brand new computer that i just made will not work with anything linux for some reason. i was able to load windows xp on it, but when I try to load a live cd/dvd or try to install any of them they will start to load then I get an error that says halted knoppix or unable to find file system for linux(either mepis or knoppix). It sound strange but these factory made disks will not work with this box. This new one I made never worked with knoppix or any linux.

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Originally Posted by coffey7

... maybe the disk is bad now. But that would mean that my mepis and my Ubuntu and knoppix disks all went bad at the same time. I have tried 4 different drives. i know its not a drive problem. I was watching movies and burning with them last night.....

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I'm really having a hard time following what you are saying. Is it only this new system that isn't working and has never worked with any Linux Live CD? Have you tried the discs in the computer that they worked in last night? There are a number of things that you should be trying at this point. One suggestion would be to put that Knoppix disc in the new system, boot it, and at the boot prompt type memtest. Let it run a few passes of memtest86 (maybe even overnight if it doesn't fail right away).

I did the memtest with a ubuntu live cd. it worked and the memory is fine. windows runs fine on the new system. Its just when I try to load any linux system live or install. these disks have worked before on all my other computers. I put the live disk into the drive(I tried 4 different ones) and I restart. its starts to load the disk os. then during the install ubuntu locks up, mepis says halted can't find file system. and knoppix says can't find file system. I will try again and type what it says word for word.

Here is the message I get.
Can't find Knoppix file system, sorry
Dropping you to a (very limited shell).
press reset to quit
additional built in commands avaliable
cat mount unmount
insmod rmmod ismod

KNOPPIX#_

It isn't just new equipment that this happens to. I have an older P3 450 system. The Knoppix Live CD starts to boot and then suddenly has a problem finding files on the CD. I've tried all the cheat codes without success. Folloed ALL the download and burn procedures. There's nothing wrong with the CD cause it boots fine on a laptop computer we have. I posted this problem a couple of weeks ago and no one has posted a solution.

Booting from EXPERT gives the following CLOOP error messages: ZLIB decompression error -3 and Read error at pos 723838108 in file /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX, 55837 bytes lost and a bunch of Respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.

I'm not sure what all this means but it appears to me that Knoppix/Linux has problems reading properly from certain CD readers. As I said the CD works just fine in another computer so it has absolutely nothing to do with how it was downloaded or burned.

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Originally Posted by nethardwareguru

....There's nothing wrong with the CD cause it boots fine on a laptop computer we have. ..... As I said the CD works just fine in another computer so.....

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We have seem many cases of discs that work OK in one computer but are still bad. They fail in another computer, yet another disc made from the same ISO file works fine.

I'm not arogant enough to say that I know this is what is wrong in your case. I don't know what is wrong. It certainly could be something else, not all boot problems are incorrect or marginal discs or marginal drives. I had one problem back when changes were made in 3.x versions of knoppix that took me months to find the combination of 2 cheat codes that I needed to get it to boot, and once I did it booted cleanly. But I have also seen plenty of people who make the "this disc worked on another computer so it must be fine" statement, only to eventually acknowledge that the problem turned out to be a fast burn, marginal media or a marginal optical drive.

I wish you luck, but if you can't offer another theory on what your problem is then don't rush to rule out that it might be a disc issue.

Actually Harry it is you who shouldn't rush to give your "one track mind" answer about it being a bad download or bad burn. Maybe that is often a solution but in this case it is not. So unless you can show definitively that is the cause, which I sincerely doubt, I would welcome any other constructive suggestions you have. If you have nothing else to offer, then I'd rather you say nothing. I spent a lot of time researching my problem in this forum before I posted two weeks ago and I've seen your stock answer countless times. It is extremely frustrating, when you are trying to resolve a serious issue, to get a boilerplate reply from someone who holds himself out as an expert.

I just burned a new knoppix std disk and a damn small linux disk and a mandriva and fedora core 6 disk and they all worked in every computer in the house(5 of them). The problem has to be with my new home built pc. Something in the bios or with the hardware must be the problem. I have never had a problem with any linux disks I have burned or bought. Only Ubuntu has been a problem with my computers. That distro just doesn't like my Intels. It works on my friends AMD machine.

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Originally Posted by nethardwareguru

... If you have nothing else to offer, then I'd rather you say nothing.....

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You seem to have some anger issues. I responded to you in one other thread, it wasn't clear if you even did the md5 check or if you burned at low speed, so I asked. You responded, were satisfied that you had made the disc properly and I left it go at that. I didn't press the issue.

Here you posted that you were certain that your disc was correct, but supported that with a because it boots in other computers statement. Because it boots in other computers is a bogus statement that has been shown wrong here many times before, and I responded for two reasons: First I didn't remember you and didn't track down all of your other posts. It certainly does look like coffey7 has some fundamental problem since no Linux system will run on his box, but you don't sound like you have that problem, and could well have an issue reading the disc including simply a dirty lense (not that I any longer care). And second because I don't think the statement that a disc must be good because it booted on another system should be spread around without the other readers hearing that, by itself, it's not a completely valid test.

You inserted yourself in this thread in a discussion that coffey7 and I were already having. You are certainly welcom to do that and any welcome suggestions for coffey7's problem would certainly be welcome, but I actually didn't see any help offered from the hardware guru. You did suggest that it appears to you that Knoppix/Linux has problems reading properly from certain CD readers, but you didn't address coffey7's statement that he had already tried multiple readers on this computer or suggest anything else that you thought he should do.

coffey7: You might want to detail as much as you can about the hardware so that someone might have a chance to spot what the issue is. I agree it soulds like a hardware issue. Just to be sure I understand correctly, you have tried booting on multiple optical drives in this computer and all fail in the same way, correct?

You mentioned that you have a dvd drive as the master and a dvd burner as a slave (as well as an sata hard drive). Does that motherboard have only one IDE connector (as many of them now do)? If you have 2 IDE connectors then I would suggest trying the other one, but that may not be an option here. I would suggest making the more demanding DVD burner the master and the reader the slave, and I would try booting with just the DVD burner hooked up and leave the dvd reader off the ide bus. And, of course, if you have an older CD reader available, try plugging that in instead of the dvd drive just as a test (an old CD reader might or might not need the knoppix nodma cheat code, try both ways just to be sure).

Thanks for you suggestions. I have tried to change the primary and secondary with the burner and the dvd rom. I even tried to change with cd burners and just cd readers. All with the same errors. There must be some setting that I have to go over in the bios. At first I couldn't even load XP because I didn't have the ram speed selected in the bios. I just had it on the default setting AUTO. The only Linux action I was able to load and run was with an Ubuntu live Cd. I selected memtest from the main start up menu. Of course when I tried to load the main OS the system would just lock up.
My system is an ASUS P5B motherboard, a intel core 2 duo 2.13 processor 6400, and 2gb of kingston ddr2 800 ram. . The mother board only has 1 IDE input. I have the dvd drives connected with one cable(IDE). The hard drive is a Maxtor 200gb Sata drive that is the only harddrive in the system.

The hard drive shouldn't matter. Knoppix might even have trouble seeing it at all, but since Knoppix doesn't need a hard disk that shouldn't be an issue. Still, as a test, I would consider unplugging the hard disk entirely just to rule it out completely.

You mention swapping primary and secondary. I assume that you really mean master and slave, since primary and secondary refer to 2 IDE connectors on the mb and you say that you have only 1. I would try the DVD burner by itself on the IDE cable and when that doesn't work the CD drive. Assuming that you have done both of those it's on to the next issue.

It soulds like you now have memory set ok, particularly if memtest will run for a while with the extended options turned on. I can't imagine why auto wouldn't have been good for you though. I wonder if auto not working is some kind of clue that we are missing. What settings did you finally choose to make it work and why did you choose that?

You actually have more memory that I've ever had. I would think Linux would be ok with it, but if you're still changing things trying to find the problem, I would consider unplugging half the memory and trying again. And if it still fails swap in the memory that you removed and remove the other gig. I don't have any good reaon for suggesting this, it just seems a simple test to do and worth while.

Do you have a volt meter? Have you checked the voltage on the power supply? Or does the BIOS show the supply voltages and are they safely in range?

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You inserted yourself in this thread in a discussion that coffey7 and I were already having. You are certainly welcom to do that and any welcome suggestions for coffey7's problem would certainly be welcome, but I actually didn't see any help offered from the hardware guru.

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That's what a forum is for. I was trying to point out to coffee7 and others who read this thread that this problem isn't only with new hardware. That might be helpful in finding a solution to this vexing problem that many people have posted about.

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You seem to have some anger issues. I responded to you in one other thread, it wasn't clear if you even did the md5 check or if you burned at low speed, so I asked. You responded, were satisfied that you had made the disc properly and I left it go at that. I didn't press the issue.

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You obviously didn't read my post. It was very clear what steps I followed.

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You seem to have some anger issues.

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You bet. I've spent two weeks trying to troubleshoot this issue. You never addressed the specific error messages I posted in this or the earlier thread. You just hit your standard boilerplate response that it must be a bad download or bad burn. Beyond that you offer nothing constructive.

coffee7: I tried booting from Knoppix 5.1.0, older 3.9, Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10 and none of them will boot either. I've tried all the cheat codes and haven't found a combo that works. I've run memtest with no errors. I have an Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard and P3 450, Kingston memory. Dual booting between Win 2k and Win XP with no problems.

All these Linux live cd's boot to a certain point and then can't find the file system.

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Originally Posted by nethardwareguru

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You seem to have some anger issues. I responded to you in one other thread, it wasn't clear if you even did the md5 check or if you burned at low speed, so I asked. You responded, were satisfied that you had made the disc properly and I left it go at that. I didn't press the issue.

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You obviously didn't read my post. It was very clear what steps I followed.

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That's not true. My statement that you quoted above is about this post that you made. You made the I know the disc is good claim, but never made any statement about the speed that you burnt it at or checking the md5 sum in your original post. I pointed out, in my only post in that thread, the importance of a slow burn and doing the md5 check. You responded that the burn had been done at a low speed and the md5 was correct. You again repeated your "The CD works just fine on the other computer" claim; I didn't feel like arguing that different readers can have marginally different error rates and this can be a factor in booting, and really didn't expect that it was the issue anyway as long as you really did the steps you now said, so I left it alone in hopes that someone else might help you. But I have to say that problems booting Knoppix on a computer of that vintage are rare and when they happen it's almost always a disc/optical drive issue or a matter of finding the right cheat codes.

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Originally Posted by nethardwareguru

You bet. I've spent two weeks trying to troubleshoot this issue. You never addressed the specific error messages I posted in this or the earlier thread. You just hit your standard boilerplate response that it must be a bad download or bad burn. Beyond that you offer nothing constructive.

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I gave you the best advice that I knew to offer based on what you told me. I avoided berating you for your repeated claims that you were absolutely certain it wasn't a disc issue. You may indeed be frustrated with the program, but I personally don't owe you extradonary effort to resolve your problem and anger that I didn't devote more time to this when I had nothing more to go on seems out of place. If you want me to address the error that you reported, the only times I've seen that error it turned out to be a disc reading issue. I didn't respond back with that in your problem thread because you had already rejected that it could be that and I certainly didn't know it was. As I say, I do not know that this is your problem, and you clearly didn't want that feedback, so not posting again in the original thread seemed quite a reasonable approach. I tried to help. Maybe I was wrong and it was something else, but I could not have known when I made my post that the disc was burnt at low speed from your first post (or even that the md5 sum was right, we have seen reports of discs with bad md5s that at least boot), and at least I made an effort.

Harry, spin it any way that makes you feel good about yourself. People can read for themselves what I originally posted as well as others and your typical boilerplate response. You're a one trick pony.

Hopefully a real expert will read the error messages that I posted here and in my other post, and clue in to what the problem is so I and others who are having this problem can finally get a resolution.

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Originally Posted by coffey7

Thanks for you suggestions. I have tried to change the primary and secondary with the burner and the dvd rom. I even tried to change with cd burners and just cd readers. All with the same errors. There must be some setting that I have to go over in the bios. At first I couldn't even load XP because I didn't have the ram speed selected in the bios. I just had it on the default setting AUTO. The only Linux action I was able to load and run was with an Ubuntu live Cd. I selected memtest from the main start up menu. Of course when I tried to load the main OS the system would just lock up.
My system is an ASUS P5B motherboard, a intel core 2 duo 2.13 processor 6400, and 2gb of kingston ddr2 800 ram. . The mother board only has 1 IDE input. I have the dvd drives connected with one cable(IDE). The hard drive is a Maxtor 200gb Sata drive that is the only harddrive in the system.

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Coffey: You report you haven't had any luck any OS. What I've suspect (and haven't seen in the earlier traffic) is that you haven't actually config'd the mboard itself. Many mboards need to be configured on-the-spot for a given CPU and RAM. On the main menu (hopefully) of the BIOS, try using the failsafe configuration option, reset the boot opts (that menu pick always changes the boot opts), and give KNOPPIX another try.....

PS: You've eliminated the issue of dissimilar RAM sticks ? If not, bag one stick, re-run the failsafe config option, and try again. HTH....

PPS: One final thing: Clear the CMOS completely. Use the jumper or pull the battery. Then go back and completely reconfig the BIOS. You'd be surprised how many bizarre hware probs are solved w/ this one....

I tried to take out one stick of ram and then swapped it with the other. Still didn't work. I think I will first reconfig the bios and start there. The good news today was I did get Mepis 6.0 and the new Ubuntu working on my other computers. By working I mean getting those darn windows videos and flashplayers to work. I used Automatix2. Works great with the new version of mepis and Ubuntu. At least the day was not a total failure. I will try all the things everyone has suggested and see if that works. Thanks for everyones time.

Just a quick observation. The P5B has an Intel chipset that is poorly supported in many, if not all current Linux distros. I have had issues with Intel, ASUS, and other brand boards of similar chipset configurations. Bios updates have not appeared to resolve them yet. I believe that there will be some resolution in the future, but they appear to be an issue at the present time.

Update. mandriva 2007 is installed. its the only Linux that worked out of 14 different distros. Now that I have some time I will clear the bios and see if that helps with the knoppix live cds.

Has anyone figured this out?? I have the same problem, only listen to this....

I have two identical computers IBM 6792-3mu the Knoppix cd works fine on one but not the other ...I am going to swap cdrom's and let you know if it worked or not.

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Originally Posted by bootz

Has anyone figured this out?? I have the same problem, only listen to this....

I have two identical computers IBM 6792-3mu the Knoppix cd works fine on one but not the other ...I am going to swap cdrom's and let you know if it worked or not.

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Solved-
The issue was hardware a cdrom drive -Lite-On IT Corp Model LTN-486S
I believe I have some more of these cdrom drives that I will test on as soon as I get to it, but so far it is this particular cdrom drive that I have... it plays cd's fine but will not boot Knoppix 5.0 or 5.1.1

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Originally Posted by bootz

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Originally Posted by bootz

Has anyone figured this out?? I have the same problem, only listen to this....

I have two identical computers IBM 6792-3mu the Knoppix cd works fine on one but not the other ...I am going to swap cdrom's and let you know if it worked or not.

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Solved-
The issue was hardware a cdrom drive -Lite-On IT Corp Model LTN-486S
I believe I have some more of these cdrom drives that I will test on as soon as I get to it, but so far it is this particular cdrom drive that I have... it plays cd's fine but will not boot Knoppix 5.0 or 5.1.1

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I found another Lite-On model: LTN-486S and it also failed with the same error, can any of you check to see what kind of cdrom you are using? I am going to download knoppix 4.02 and test that to work with the LTN-486S as someone on another LUG say it works very well.

Just to avoid FUD here, I can boot a Knoppix CD from my Lite-on drive just fine.

Hey all,.. I'm new here and just found this thread through Google.

Same exact problem.. first my specs:

Intel Core2Duo 2.13ghz
Intel motherboard(965ss? off the top of my head)
2gb RAM(2x1gb running dual channel)
GeForce 8800GTS
250gb SATA HD
16x IDE DVD Burner

LiveCD's attempted(and errors received off the top of my head, i'm not with the machine right now):

Knoppix (5.1, i believe): cannot find file system
Puppy(1.06?): "Cannot start X" also errors about not being able to locate "/usr"(which should be on the cd, right?)
Gparted: something about a loop error
Ubuntu 6.10: gets to initial menu, choosing Run/Install results in kernel error

Yes, these discs work in other computers. Yes, I'm a Linux novice.

Windows XP and Vista install discs both booted properly. Vista is currently installed.

If anyone has any ideas or needs more details, let me know!

Hello,
I too have the problem of a non-bootable Linux.

My System:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2,6GHZ
Corsair 2GB DDR2 RAM
ASUS P5K Mainboard with JMicron Controller
Seagate 500GB 16MB SATA HDD
LG GSA-H62N ATAPI DVD-Writer (SATA?)

I tried:
Knoppix Live CD 5.0.1 --- Can't find file System (including ALL cheatcodes, none of them worked)
Knoppix Live CD 5.1.1 --- Can't find file System (including ALL cheatcodes, none of them worked)
openSuse Live DVD 10.2 --- Can't find CD
openSuse Live CD 10.3 RC2 --- Can't find CD
TING 2007.0-r2 (seemed to work)

I checked the md5sum's (all correct) and the CD's/DVD's are working on other (older) computers.
Only the TING seemed to start correct, but I had no GUI. Since I am fairly new to Linux and have also very limited knowledge of the Gentoo-Live-CD I don't know if there is a GUI anyway...

I want to install SUSE, or Debian, or Gentoo (also Gentoo not in the near future) for research, so I don't want to install a different Linux.
I would appreciate Knoppix as a Rescue-Live System, but after all I can't install any Linux.

Many forums complain about the JMicron-Controller, but the several CD's/DVD's I tried have different kernels, so I'm not sure where the problem really is located here.
Someone knows a solution?

HAVE PHUN!