Help booting KNOPPIX 5.1 live dvd on Sony Vaio

[PattiMichell]

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-T350P laptop and when I try to boot the Knoppix 5.1 Live DVD it just says "Operating system not found" This happens when I remove the hard drive from the BIOS boot order - so I'm sure the DVD is *in* the boot order. SuSE will boot, but it uses GRUB. Is there a known problem with Knoppix?

Help!!
Patti

[Harry Kuhman]

No problem that I know of that matches this error. You're booting Suse from the same drive with the same BIOS settings? It really sounds like the disc isn't burnt properly. Did you burn both CDs yourself? What do you see on the Knoppix CD when you try to view it as a CD under Windows (or under Suse)?

[PattiMichell]

No problem that I know of that matches this error. You're booting Suse from the same drive with the same BIOS settings? It really sounds like the disc isn't burnt properly. Did you burn both CDs yourself? What do you see on the Knoppix CD when you try to view it as a CD under Windows (or under Suse)?

Thanks for the reply!!!!!!!!!!!!
The CD is fine - the md5 checked out and I burned the 5.1.1 cd with k3b (verify data ON) and double checked the md5 at the start of the burn and the CD also boots/runs on my HP Pavilion just fine. GParted live cd boots/runs on the Sony as well as SuSE - so I think it's the Knoppix bootloader.

I just got through downloading the Knoppix 3.9 Live CD and that DOES boot OK on my Sony (whew!!) - so something happened to Knoppix booting upon moving from 3.9 -> 5.1.1. I'm currently downloading 4.0 and 5.1.0 to zero in on where it happened... I'll post results
Thanks!
Patti - the-bug-magnet

EDIT: OK, found it. The 4.0 (and later) CD's give the error message "operating system not found" on my Sony - apparently something changed in the bootloader. They were all burned on my old CD/DVD writer and boot fine on my HP Pavilion dv6325us. I just noticed the "check CD option" (when booting on my Pavilion) so I'll double check them, but this looks like a bios-compatability problem. At least I could get the 3.9 cd to boot so I can fix my sony! It seems that ntfs works OK on 3.9 - is that true?

THANKS
Patti

[Harry Kuhman]

It seems that ntfs works OK on 3.9 - is that true?

Good luck resolving your boot problem. There are some people here that know the ins and outs of the various boot loaders very well, some may be able to make sense of your problem. You may get better feedback in the Hardware and Booting forum than in the Laptop forum. I'll move this thread there if you indicate that is desired. I doubt that this problem would be unique to laptops.

As to ntfs working in 3.9, I'm assuming that you mean writing to ntfs (as Knoppix could always read from NTFS), and if so the answer is NO. Nore is 4.02 safe. There are reports the ntfs writing works "in a limited capacity" (whatever that means) starting in 5.0.1, but I'm not convinced and not ready to risk my partitions and all of their data to test this, particularly when corruption may not always be immidately evident. And I'm not sure ntfs writing is safe even for Windows, I have multiple ntfs drives that Windows can no longer open and Knoppix can't recover the files from (never written to by Knoppix). And time spent here has convinced me that one of the biggest things that drives people to Linux and Knoppix is ntfs file recovery. So if Windows can't write to them safely, why should I expect Knoppix to be able to do so? And how would I know if problems seen after writing to a ntfs partition with Knoppix (perhaps long after) were due to Knoppix or just another case of the Microsoft "good enough for our users" philosphy?Some others have expressed that they can make 5.x versions write to ntfs, so it's a personal choice there.