Help Booting

[Gamer50655]

I just got an old Gateway Solo 2500 from a friend. I wanted to try Linux(first time) so I downloaded the newest version and burned it to a disc. When I tried to boot(bios set to boot from cd-rom) I get to the welcome screen. So then I press enter and the penguin comes up in the corner. It says that it is searching for a usb device and then finishes. Then It goes to found compressed image or something like that at /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX. I goes on forever and forever and doesn't do anything. What can I do to fix this? Is my computer to slow?

It only has about 64Mb Ram, and a 4G Harddrive. I recently wiped the harddrive clean idk if that might help. Just the basics.

[Harry Kuhman]

I'm not inclined to look up the Gateway model that you have, it would be more helpful if you gave us specs: CPU type and speed, memory (what does about 64 meg mean?), and so on. A 64 meg system may be pretty slow and might not be enough to bring up a GUI (particularly KDE). Follow the Documentation link near the top of this page and read the both wiki articles "Downloading FAQ" (it includes burning information) and the "Cheat Codes" section. You might try booting without a GUI or with a lower memory intensive GUI than KDE.

[Harry Kuhman]

By the way, if you mean what I mean by wiping the hard drive clean (no partition at all), it might not help, it would be more helpful to have a Linux swap partition out there or even to have a nice empty FAT partition (I think Knoppix may then ofter to create a swap file on the FAT partition).

[abhishekbh]

somehow I don't think its a memory problem, unless your ram sticks are corrupted. It sounds like a simple cd burning problem. Those sectors are probabaly bad on the cd....try burning it again, or on another computer.

[Gamer50655]

By the way, if you mean what I mean by wiping the hard drive clean (no partition at all), it might not help, it would be more helpful to have a Linux swap partition out there or even to have a nice empty FAT partition (I think Knoppix may then ofter to create a swap file on the FAT partition).

I used "Darik's Boot and Nuke" on the harddrive. What do I do to get the FAT partition?

[ckamin]

You just need to partition and format the drive. Since Knoppix is not booting, it might be best to try using a Windows boot disk and using fdisk to create a partition and then just format the partition using Fat32. You would be prompted by fdisk to use large drive support, just answer "yes" and that should result in a Fat32 partition. If you don't have a boot dosk, a Windows 98 boot disk image can be downloaded at: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm Or download theis file directly: http://www.msu-hb.de/download/boot98se.exe

To try booting into Knoppix, I would try a cheatcode such as "desktop=icewm" to use a desktop with less overhead, that might run with limited Ram. If you are prompted to create a swapfile, that would help increase the capabilities using memory. If not there is more information to be found by using the "Documentation" link at the top of the page. There is more information on cheatcodes and how to use them here: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes