Knoppix toram gives blank screen after loading ~20 to 30%

[rajmgd2004]

Hi All,

If I use cheat code knoppix toram in my laptop - Compaq N610 it loads approx 20 to 30% and then suddenly blank screen comes and after that nothing happens.If I boot knoppix with out cheat code "knoppix toram" it works fine no problem at all.
I want to free my CD drive to burn CD's .Any one can help me.

Thanks,

Mraj

[ckamin]

Welcome to the Knoppix.net forum!

If I use cheat code knoppix toram in my laptop - Compaq N610 it loads approx 20 to 30% and then suddenly blank screen comes and after that nothing happens

In order to use the "toram" cheatcode, you should have at least enough system memory to load the entire CD into Ram and then a little for headroom. I have a laptop with 1 Gig of Ram installed and it works well enough. I have one with 512 Meg and it will not work with the "toram" cheatcode. If you have insuficient RAM, you have a few choices to accomplish what you are trying to do. You can install more RAM if your laptop is upgradeable to that extent. You can purchase an external burner and connect it via USB2 or IEEE1394(FireWire). If you do not have USB2 or Firewire on the notebook, an inexpensive PC Card can be purchased to add one, or both functions to your notebook. I have numerous external units and they can be used with any compatible system and I move them around as needed. I have had fewer issues with Firewire than USB, but either would serve you well. If you are stuck with USB1.1, then you just need to keep your burning speeds below 4X and not have any aspirations of burning a DVD. Almost any external USB2 burner should revert to 1.1 when so connected. Just limit the burn speeds as I mentioned.

There might be a way to use a swap file or other configuration to make the "toram" cheat work without adding RAM, but I have not found any that works well enough to recommend here. If anyone else has a configuration solution that works well for them, please post it.

Good Luck! Please post your solution if you resolve your issue.

[rajmgd2004]

Hi Admin,

Thanks for your reply.In my laptop I have 1G RAM .If I boot knoppix without cheat code it shows up 1G RAM and mounts approx 820M.I tried to specify mem in cheat code and that also not working like knoppix mem=900M knoppix toram.It still fails.

thanks,

mraj

[Harry Kuhman]

Thanks for your reply.In my laptop I have 1G RAM

1) You may want to look at your BIOS and see if there is any setting that controls ram much memory is used for video. Most laptops steal some of the memory for video use, while desktops with AGP or even PCI video cards do not. Still, I wouldn't have expected the notebook to default to taking enough memory to mess this up for you, but it's worth looking.

2) If you burnt the CD at high speed, reburn another one slower or, better yet, use a 700 meg CDRW. Many problems are seen from high speed burns and this sounds like it could be one of them. I do understand that you can boot the CD on the laptop without the toram code and it works, but it is not clear how fast it boot or if it is having to do a lot of rereading in the process. Such is the nature of high speed burn problems, they may work on one system but not another, or even work on a drive under some conditions but not others.

Please post back as you learn what is causing this.

[hellfred]

Hi All,

If I use cheat code knoppix toram in my laptop - Compaq N610 it loads approx 20 to 30% and then suddenly blank screen comes and after that nothing happens.If I boot knoppix with out cheat code "knoppix toram" it works fine no problem at all.
I want to free my CD drive to burn CD's .Any one can help me.

Thanks,

Mraj

I use another way for freeing my CD drive:
Windows Partition PMI
I boot my laptop, choose grub in the windows bootloader.
Grub loads the iso-image that is placed on my primary partition (NTFS), and knoppix mounts my permanent home (2 GB) on another (FAT) partition. So I got a working and editable knoppix install without repartitioning and formation of my laptop harddisk, and no DVD / CDRom is needed for booting. With the latest ntfs driver writing to a permanent home on a NTFS partition should be able too, as the Image of the permanent home is not resized.

Hellfred

[rajmgd2004]

Burnt a new CD with slow speed 4X and used cheat code "knoppix testcd". testcd gives blank scrren after few min.So, I downloaded another new ISO image thinking the old one might not good.
Burnt again at slow speed - 4X this time also "knoppix testcd " gives blank screen after few min.Tested again "knoppix toram" after 20% it gives blank screen. Any idea?
Is there any way after booting with cd I can copy complete cd to RAM??

[Harry Kuhman]

So, I downloaded another new ISO image thinking the old one might not good.

Do you belong to a religion that does not believe in using the md5 check? I can't understand downloading another "new" copy of the ISO, which itself might be bad, when instead in about a minute you could do a simple test that would have told you if the ISO that you already had was good or not for certain. And if you are skipping over the md5 step clearly spelled out in the downloading faq, even after you think that you have a bad file, I have to at least wonder if you are skipping any other important information already given there too.

[Harry Kuhman]

testcd gives blank scrren after few min.

It could be that the screen saver is just kicking in. Try hitting the control key or the shift key at this point and seeing if the blank screen turns back on.

[rajmgd2004]

I have not updated my reply correctly.Before downloading another ISO image I checked md5 and it is correct.Still , I thought why not download one more and check?.So downloaded another ISO image checked for md5 and found md5 check okay.But, Still blank screen appears.
screen savers kicks in before OS loads??.Anyway,I will test it today.

[hellfred]

Bad ram can lead to defect CDroms from correct iso images. Make a memory test!
"knoppix memtest"
(or something like this. See knoppix-cheatcodes.txt)
I once had this problem and even bought an new cd-rw drive, before I identifyed the defect memory as the real source of my problems.
Hellfred