USB Puppy Won't Boot

[x15j]

With the flash drive plugged in; did you try booting with the cd, and when it gets to the splash screen, type "puppy pmedia=usbflash"
(no quotes)?

That seems to work.

[rjbrewer]

Guess you were trying to put 4.3.1 on the flash. I mentioned
earlier it had problems.

I use 4.1.2 more than 90% of the time. Almost anything 4.3.1 has can be added to 4.1.2 in the form of easily added pet packages.

It installs easily to flash with fat16 or fat32.

[looseSCREWorTWO]

x15j,
you might not be doing anything wrong at all. Acer and Dell do some pretty weird things with their BIOS.

Try the USB Stick in another (non-Acer, non-Dell) PC and see if it works. A PC no more than 5 years old will usually Boot from USB without a problem, except if it's in an Internet Cafe (where they often disable USB Boots for security purposes)

[Crash]

Puppy version 4.3.1 works fine on my USB drive, FAT32. It is a Sandisk Cruzer 4GB. I originally partitioned and formatted it using a Windows98 floppy boot disk. I have the Puppy files tucked away in a "\p431" subdirectory so as not to mix things up, otherwise it is pretty standard.

I've had the USB stick for over a year now, and it seems to behave OK no matter what version of Puppy Linux I boot to.

Boot code:

LINLD.COM image=C:\p431\vmlinuz initrd=C:\p431\initrd.gz "cl=root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=usbflash acpi=on"

[nooby]

Could some older BIOS be more friendly to LINLD.COM boot loader maybe?

LINLD.COM image=C:\p431\vmlinuz initrd=C:\p431\initrd.gz "cl=root=/dev/ram0 PMEDIA=usbflash acpi=on"

Interesting that both LINLD.COM and PMEDIA needs to be big CAPITAL letters.

My usb problem seems more like some timing set up not allowing the boot time to settle for the usb. It goes instanly to boot up the hdd tracks and never look more than an instant at the usb. Even when I do F9 or F12 and tell it to boot the usb it instantly goes over to the hdd tracks.

So the solution for me was to include the vmlinuz and the initrd for the usb to be on the hdd and then it could load from the usb.

Wish I could find that linld.com thing somewhere. Yes I know the FreeDOS org something. Should look again there.

[cthisbear]

Different ports.

Had this on my wifes newer computer 6 months ago.
I was really surprised.

I've never had a failure Fat32.

Boot and LBA >>must be ticked in GParted.

/////

Check my post here. Strange USBs
" What I did notice on the Medion was that "

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=48350

/////////

puppy on a stick.

I use all the normal settings...but here is sneeky on Youtube.

I only click Enter...no fancy footwork needed.

I check GParted after install..not before...as stated tick
LBA and Boot.

And do not save settings...> on exit.

Bios bios bios >> some you have to nominate which
hard drive to boot first + your USB.

Some you just hit F12 >>select first boot. >>USB

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nYaw9eY ... re=related

Booting 5 different USBs with different pups
and 3 USB hard drives.
Chris.

[Crash]

"LINLD.COM" and "PMEDIA" can be upper or lower case.

LINLD.COM is on the Wakepup2 floppy, but here is a copy of it anyway:

[lotech]

It is always that new 'improved' version not necessary work better, I wish the next release will take care of the usb flash boot problem without too much of user intervention.

[x15j]

I'm in over my head starting about half-way down this page.[/img]

[lotech]

I finally install pup usb on a Dell machine and it boots up unexpectedly !! no more question case closed

[nooby]

Thanks Crash

[Crash]

nooby-

You're welcome. Bear in mind that LINLD.COM is a DOS program, and runs from DOS. It will run in a FAT16 or FAT32 partition, but not in an ext2 or NTFS partition. I have an old WIN98 floppy that I use to prepare the USB drive, but you can use FREEDOS or OPENDOS or DOS6.2 also. On some computers the floppy won't recognize the USB drive, but in that case the computer itself usually won't be able to boot directly to a USB drive anyway.

The number one problem I've found with not being able to boot to a USB drive is the computer itself. It simply may not be able to boot to a USB drive. In that case, you must use some other means to boot, such as a CD or DVD. The newer computers, in the last three years or so, seem much better in this respect. I've had my worst luck with Laptops, which is too bad because the portability of a USB drive is so applicable to a laptop.

x15j-

I'll send you a private message to discuss a solution to your situation. It can be pretty aggravating to see all this mumbo-jumbo in the thread. There is a lot of web documentation regarding USB booting, but none of it matters if it doesn't pertain to your individual setup.

[nooby]

Good that you reminded me.

The solution I used is a bit cumbersome.

One either use the os that already can be loaded from the HDD itself or one use a rescue CD/DVD that can access the hdd and one change grub to include the OS one want to boot.

In my case it was Debian/AntiX/mepis 8.5 prefinal

So I did this:

So the solution for me was to include a copy of the vmlinuz and the initrd from the usb to be on the hdd in a subdirectory and then it could load from the usb.

the menu.lst doesn't ahve to mention the usb at all. the vmlinuz and the initrd does look for DVD, USB, HDD and CF and what have you by default so it does find what it need as long as one get the hdd boot as right as the other OS that already are on the HDD.

But I have only tested it on one computer. But the person that did recommend it says it is a viable way to go if nothing else works. I then installed AntiX Linux OS from that USB so it worked out good.