Fail to start on HP Compaq dc7700p

[fergus]

The Knoppix boot CD/DVD (all of 5.1 AND 4.? AND 3.8 ) is picked up in my HP Compaq dc7700p Small Form Factor and shows the "boot:" prompt which I can interrupt (eg knoppix 1 nodma lang=uk) or leave alone (go into X): but nothing happens. The next screen is blank and the machine goes into Suspend (I think: in any case the screen blanks and there is no drive/ disk activity). Is there somethng about the architecture of the dc7700p which means, dunno, a new kernel is required, or what? I have tried some cheatcodes but with no success. In other contexts it is usually nodma that comes to the rescue when all else fails, but on this machine that hasn't made any difference at all.
Such a blow, up to now K 5.1 has been 100% capable.
Does anybody out there have any hints or ideas, please?
(Also, does anybody know anything about 5.2?)
Fergus

[fredvej]

Would you please try to write failsafe instead of knoppix at the boot prompt and tell us what happens ?

Sometimes knoppix vga=normal is enough, but failsafe disables almost all hardware checking.

[fergus]

Thank you. I typed
failsafe 1 lang=uk
and got in at the level I wanted (ie not defaulting into X). This gave me most of the access I wanted. It would be nice to know why
knoppix 1 lang=uk
stalls so badly, but I guess the world won't stop rotating if I never get to the bottom of this.
Please, can you or anybody tell me whether there are switches I could add to "failsafe .." so that my USB stick is picked up? It doesn't show under fdisk because "failsafe .." typed without switches says "Don't bother looking". Using "knoppix .." successfully on all other machines before this not very ideal HP, the stick's come up as /dev/sda?.
Thank you, again.

[ckamin]

fergus

Look at the documentation regarding the "failsafe" cheatcode. It is a block of individual cheatcodes that will solve many booting issues when it is used. It is up to you to determine, by trial and error, which individual chestcode, or combination of cheatcodes will help Knoppix run on your system. The information can be found under the documentation link at the top of the page, or at the following link: http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Cheat_Codes It is not very likely that you would require all of the cheatcodes addressed by "failsafe". I would guess that your inability to find your USB drive could have something to do with the limited configuration when using the "failsafe" cheatcode. Your blank screen may be resolved by using the "xmodule=vesa" code, since it has addressed many blank screen issues for other users. Since you did not list your specific hardware details, including graphics chipset, it's difficult to assist you much further.

[fergus]

Well, in the end
knoppix acpi=off
did the trick with this machine.

I was dead bothered that I would have to explore all the possibilities and all the combinations of
knoppix nothis nothat somethingelse=off
but in fact
debug
was the most helpful approach possible as it provided a line-by-line breakdown of what things worked and what things failed.

Thanks, all who helped.

Fergus

[zeewolf]

Well, in the end
knoppix acpi=off
did the trick with this machine.

I was dead bothered that I would have to explore all the possibilities and all the combinations of
knoppix nothis nothat somethingelse=off
but in fact
debug
was the most helpful approach possible as it provided a line-by-line breakdown of what things worked and what things failed.

Thanks, all who helped.

Fergus

Tank you, that solved my problem with a Toshiba A200.

Thank´s again, and thank´s to Google also.