Can't boot CD after formatting hd. (Solved?)

[iamnu]

I had Puppy working on a Windows XP very old laptop.

I then used Windows XP to format the hard drive. When the hard drive had been formatted, I turned off the computer before XP began installing again.

Now when I boot Puppy, it "pauses" at two places.
1. "Looking for Puppy partition in hdc (iso9660 filesystem)
2. hdc: drive not redy for command

I don't know if it paused at these places when it was running okay.

Next I am asked to select the keyboad map: I select "US".
Then "Welcome to the Puppy Linux Video Wizard!". I select "Xvesa".

Now I get a green and white screen that does not fill out the entire computer screen, with an unreadable "window" inside of the screen. I can't read anything on it.

Seems to me that when I when through this process the first time, Puppy asked me more questions...like screen size, etc.

Can someone suggest how I make Puppy ask me the "original" questions?

Thanks

[Pizzasgood]

I can't help much, but I can explain about the questions. When you choose Xorg, it asks questions before attempting to display the screen. When you choose Xvesa, it asks after it sets up the screen. So either you're choosing Xvesa when you used to use Xorg, or it's crashing while it sets up the screen.

[Flash]

You don't say how much RAM you have. Here's my guess what's wrong: since you say this laptop is old I guess there is not enough RAM to boot Puppy. Somehow Puppy must have found or created a swap memory on the hard drive when it was able to boot, which you deleted when you formatted the drive.

So my WAG is that you need to create a swap partition on your hard drive, for Puppy to use.

[iamnu]

Yes, that was the problem. I used Xorg and now it asks all the right questions, and Puppy works fine.

Thanks for your help...

[Flash]

What was the problem? Are you trying to drive me nuts? Be more specific. The forum is for other people to learn from, not just to ask questions.

Thanks.