knoppix stops at "starting sound"

[wr426f]

dear all,
yesterday my laptop has crached and i am trying to get some data with knoppix, i have followed the procedure but while starting up knoppix, the program stops at :starting sound...
any idea what the problem could be?(HD completely dead?)

thankx,
Danny

[Harry Kuhman]

The good news is that Knoppix doesn't care if the hard drive is dead or even if there is a hard drive, so this isn't a sign that it is dead (although that is not assurance that it isn't). Not sure why it is hanging, I suggest trying to boot in expert mode. And obviously you don't need sound at all to recover data so if you can bypass whatever is hanging you might be good.

[wr426f]

The good news is that Knoppix doesn't care if the hard drive is dead or even if there is a hard drive, so this isn't a sign that it is dead (although that is not assurance that it isn't). Not sure why it is hanging, I suggest trying to boot in expert mode. And obviously you don't need sound at all to recover data so if you can bypass whatever is hanging you might be good.

thank you for the quick answer, but how do i boot in expert mode? can you explane to me please?

[Harry Kuhman]

I likely haven't even downloaded the version that you are using, so I can only give information in general concepts. Also, I should mention that I'm about to go to sleep, so this will be my last quick response.

Basically, in expert mode you bypass the Knoppix automatic detection and tell it what hardware you have. This may allow you to bypass faulty detection that causing a hang. Just boot knoppix and type expert at the boot prompt. I suggest taking good notes on how you answer the questions; and if you do hang try again and answer the question that led to the hang differently. Also, you might want to do a Google search on knoppix expert mode (always good advice before asking this type of question). There might be a "cheat code" that would help you get past the hang, but I have never heard of a hang at this point, so I don't know what to suggest. However someone else might be able to make more suggestions or I may come up with something myself if you learn anything from your experiments with expert mode.

And I'm assuming that you confirmed with as md5 test that you have a good ISO download before burning the Knoppix disc, and that you burnt at low speed, otherwise you might just be hanging because you have a bad disc and expert mode isn't going to help that.

[krishna.murphy]

I suggest reviewing the cheatcodes - expert might be more "interactive" than you want. There's a copy of the file knoppix-cheatcodes.txt in the KNOPPIX folder, when looking from another OS, e.g. Windows. There are also copies posted on various websites - Google is your friend.

One quick option that will probably get you going enough to look at the hard drive is

knoppix nosound

- just type that (or expert, if you like) in before the big penguin goes away, early in the boot process.

Cheers!
Krishna