Unable to boot Knoppix

[Crusader]

Unable to boot Knoppix 3.3-2004-02-09 or 3.3-2003-09-17
I have a friend with a three year old desktop system from Dell. She can't get the boot order in the setup to change the order things boot in, so she's been using a boot floppy. About two week ago, the 2003-09-17 version froze completely, and then wouldn't boot, so she tried the 2004-02-09 version and got the same error after loading minroot.gz:

crc error<6>Freeing initrd memory: 478k freed
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:01

Please note that it doesn't seem to be a problem with the .iso; I'm using a CD burned from the same download right now, and both her CDs have the same problem.

Basically, no matter what we tried, the system always stalls right after the penguin appears in the booting part- not the boot options screen. It doesn't seem to ever touch the CD drive.
We've tried changing the boot order, booting with and without the floppy, switching which CD drive the disc is in, and using a different boot floppy, all with the same result.

The system has two FAT32 hard drives, a CDRW and a CD ROM, and has been apparently experiencing screen problems (turning completely blue for a split second) recently when running Windows XP, not that I think that's related.

Any thoughts?

[SolarCat]

That's my computer he's talking about. I recently managed to fix the problem (it had something to do with the disk, I just kept making disk images until one worked) and actually managed to install Knoppix onto the hd. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to get Windows to work, Knoppix crashed. (Windows won't recognize the 80GB hard drive because the bios won't - if anyone has any ideas on how to trick Windows on that, please let me know.)
And now the Knoppix boot floppy disk is broken again, giving the same errors, or else something along the lines of "Invalid boot. Please insert next disk." Any idea what's causing the problem?

[pc]

- Check JUMPERS at HD and CD units
- Check IDE proper conection
. Check BIOS at proper units recognition
- Check BIOS BOOT order

[Georges]

Unable to boot Knoppix 3.3-2004-02-09 or 3.3-2003-09-17
...
crc error<6>Freeing initrd memory: 478k freed
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 01:01

I got exactly the same problem, same Knoppix version (3.3-2004-02-09) same error messages.


Hardw.: brand new HP compaq0/intel P4/3Ghz/ 512 Mo DDR/ DVD burner Sony RU530/LCD Screen hp 1502 15".

My ISO is ok and works with my others stations (intel an amd based).

I found this morning the "magic" boot command:

At the boot, just type: failsafe. Everything seems to be ok (I'm posting from Knoppix/Konqueror thru a firewalled LAN).

I think it's a hardware problem with the DDR.

Hope this will help.
Regards.