Unsuccessful Boot; Only a Black Screen w/Blinking Cursor.
Hello, there! As my post count implies, I am a n00b to these forums. I have checked the Knoppix burning and usage FAQs before posting, but was unable to find an answer to my problem. Thus, here I come.
At first, I downloaded the Knoppix CD-ROM from an “official” download site – not a non-endorsed third party. I proceeded to burn the ISO to a 700MB CD-R, and then tried to boot with it. Unfortunately – and this was my mistake – I did not ensure that the CD-R was burned as bootable, and so it wasn’t. At that point, I burned a new, bootable Knoppix CD in nero burning ROM. The size of my bootable Knoppix CD-ROM’s data is approximately 696MB, specifically 729,833,472 bytes.
Just to experiment, I set my BIOS to boot from the floppy and then the CD-ROM, and tried it with the first, non-bootable CD. (I was not sure whether it was bootable at the time.) Of course, that didn’t work, so I downloaded and installed Smart Boot Manager on a floppy to see if I could get it to boot with that. I received a “Failed Disk” error.
Next, I popped in the certainly bootable CD, and restarted the computer. This time, the computer attempted to boot from the CD... and led me to a black screen, with a blinking cursor. I left the computer unattended for a good ten minutes, but when I returned, nothing had happened. I attempted rebooting several times, and it was no different. Then, I attempted booting from the Smart floppy and the CD-ROM in turn; this yielded the same result.
To make sure it wasn’t an isolated incident, I tried both CDs by the same means on three different machines. The first one ordinarily runs WinME/WinXP in a dual-boot configuration, and it is a 1GHz with 512MB of RAM. The other two are identical to one another; they normally boot into Win2000 Server, and are 700MHz rigs with 128MB of RAM each.
Am I inexplicably sh*t outta luck :D, or did I have two bad Knoppix burns? Or is it something else I am not even thinking about?
Re: Unsuccessful Boot; Only a Black Screen w/Blinking Cursor
I, too, am a Linux n00b, and I encountered a similar experience using Knoppix on my parent's Compaq Presario (forgotten which model) as a recovery disk. Knoppix locked up on the machine (only 128MB), so I had to pull the power plug & reboot. Upon reboot, received black screen with blinking black cursor. I opened the case & pulled the lithium battery to reset CMOS, & reseated the RAM just in case. The machine then booted up fine.
You might want to try this. I've read of a similar problem with Knoppix on some Dells, with the CMOS reset fixing the prob.
Re: Unsuccessful Boot; Only a Black Screen w/Blinking Cursor
Quote:
Originally Posted by r3dn3ck
I, too, am a Linux n00b, and I encountered a similar experience using Knoppix on my parent's Compaq Presario (forgotten which model) as a recovery disk. Knoppix locked up on the machine (only 128MB), so I had to pull the power plug & reboot. Upon reboot, received black screen with blinking black cursor. I opened the case & pulled the lithium battery to reset CMOS, & reseated the RAM just in case. The machine then booted up fine.
Hmm. I think I'll try that at home... but then, considering that this happened to me on three different machines, do you think it could be something else?
I have re-downloaded the ISO, just to make sure. I checked the CRC, and it was fine. Per casca's recommendation, I burned one disc at a slower speed -- but I've received the same result, every time.
Just to mention my specific burning process, I'm using nero. I ditch the wizard, select "ISO (BOOT)", choose the ISO, and burn. I finalize the disc, too. I've burned it in two variants (aside from those mentioned above, as I've still been trying to get it to work): One with the advanced options on the "Boot" nero menu disabled, and one with them enabled.
Just to make sure, the CD should also be burned as the RAW format, right? What about Joilet and stuff like that? Does anyone know the specific nero settings required? I have looked up a few guides, but they're in German, and while I have a rough understanding of the language, they don't say anything about settings. Simply how to burn a bootable image, and I already know how to do that... but, does anyone know what the specifics are?
Re: Unsuccessful Boot; Only a Black Screen w/Blinking Cursor
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raz
I proceeded to burn the ISO to a 700MB CD-R, and then tried to boot with it. Unfortunately – and this was my mistake – I did not ensure that the CD-R was burned as bootable, and so it wasn’t. At that point, I burned a new, bootable Knoppix CD in nero burning ROM.
The ISO is the diskimage, you shouldn't to burn it as file (as you seem to do) but rather as "image". Close the wizard and chose "burn image" from the file menu in Nero. It's all explained in the docs too, see top of page. The burned image is bootable by itself.
Sorry for the RTFM response, it is indeed kinda stupid that you can't burn an image directly from the Nero wizard.
