Puppy CD won't boot (Solved: bad CD-RW)

[Ihatewindowsxp]

I am a newbie to Puppy and I'm trying to run it off of a LiveCD. The process begins and I see that my hardware is being recognized. The process stops with this error:

ERROR, cannot find Puppy on idecd boot media
PUPMODE=1 PDEV=
Excited to initial ramdisk commandline
/bin/sh; can't access tty; job control turned off

I am not sure where to proceed. I've run a report from "Balerc Advisor" detailing my hardware configuration. I've attached this to this post. Hopefully somebody can help me so I can enjoy Puppy.

[cplater]

Looking at your configuration, it appears that you have two optical drives a dvd/rw and a cd-rom. Which one are you booting from? The error message seems to indicate that the boot is confused as to which drive it is booting off of.

[Ihatewindowsxp]

I am booting off the DVD/RW drive. THE CD/RW drive is empty.

[Ian]

It would be better if you confined your request to this one post as it concerns only one subject.
We usually encourage people to limit their requests to one subject per post.

That said have you tried booting your live CD from the CD-ROM or in another machine.

[Ihatewindowsxp]

I've tried it with both my CD/RW and DVD/CD drives. THe CD/RW drive is set to secondary and doesn't recognize the Puppy CD. THe Maser is the DVD/CD drive and that's the one I'm getting this error on.

[Flash]

Try making the CD-RW the master and the DVD the slave. To do this you will have to open the computer and remove the drives to change the jumper settings on the rear, unless they are already set to "cable select." You may have to physically swap the position of the drives, in order to plug the cable into them correctly. This job should require a #1 and #2 Phillips screwdriver, and a small needle-nose pliers. If you have a vacuum cleaner that can be connected to blow, plan to use it to blow the dust out of the computer while you have it open. Do this outside, as there will probably be lots of dust.

Write down exactly how everything is before you change it, so you can put it back the way it was if this doesn't work.

[marksouth2000]

Before you try messing with the hardware or the BIOS or stuff, try the simple attempts at solution. At the boot prompt, type

Code: Select all

puppy ide=nodma

which will fix the problem you describe better than 90% of the time.

[Flash]

Thanks, Mark. That sounds better. I hope it works.

[Ihatewindowsxp]

Ok I just tried at the boot screen of Puppy to enter the puppy<Space>ide=nodma as mentioned in the earlier post. Unfortunately it would appear that I'm in the 10%. I still get the same error as before. Regarding the drive swap that's no problem at all. I installed the drives (DVD drive as Master and CD/RW as Slave) and I've been meaning to open my case to do yearly vacuuming and maintenance. My question is: Is my problem a software problem or a hardware problem? Basing the report about my computer it appears that I'm running nothing different from others who just booted from the CD and had 0 problems. It appears rather strange that on my computer Puppy cannot find itself.

Any Ideas? Oh, BTW the release I downloaded is: puppy-2.10r1-seamonkey.iso

Maybe I DL the wrong release?

[PaulBx1]

Unless the hardware or bios configuration is invalid, it appears Ihatewindowsxp simply has a rare configuration that has managed to trip up the puppy boot scripts. In that case, rather than fiddling with the hardware, maybe the script ought to be fixed. His current hardware configuration is valuable to us because it displays a problem in the latest release.

Just a thought...

[marksouth2000]

It appears rather strange that on my computer Puppy cannot find itself.

It happens when the system attempts to mount the CD in the boot drive. Sadly, many computers get the IDE channels scrambled at this step. Since no one ever runs Windows off a CD, no one bothers to fix the fact that there are a lot of broken BIOSes out there.

The next attempt is to work through all the ACPI and APIC possiblities and write down a combination that works if you find it.

Try adding

Code: Select all

acpi=on
acpi=off
acpi=force

and also experiment with

Code: Select all

noapic

and all possible combinations.

If none of those work, try booting from a Smart Boot Manager floppy and selecting the CD as the boot drive, that may work.

I know PaulBX1 likes to disagree with me (hi Paul!) but the fact is that software is, on average, better than hardware. Over 99% of all software is garbage, and 100% of hardware.

Cheers,
Mark

[Flash]

... My question is: Is my problem a software problem or a hardware problem?

That's what we're trying to figure out.

...Any Ideas? Oh, BTW the release I downloaded is: puppy-2.10r1-seamonkey.iso

Maybe I DL the wrong release?

No, any release of Puppy should boot if the CD is properly burned. I can't remember if you mentioned, can you boot anything from the CD in this machine? For instance, have you tried booting a Windows installation CD, just to see if it will work?

[Ihatewindowsxp]

In reply to the most recent questions regarding the CD drive yes I do use it regularly. It is recognized by the BIOS and by XP. I am trying to use the boot info given earlier and I will let know of the results.

[Ihatewindowsxp]

Ok, please disregard my previous post. Although I can RUN any CD from the drive it appears upon reboot the drive (or any CD in it) isn't recognized. So what's my options there?

Regarding the suggestions of entering codes upon boot I tried all that were given. I couldn't get anything to work but interestingly enough I did try to run using the code to run from RAM only and although I did get the same error message as before it had the following 2 lines added onto it:

#usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

Is this helpful?

[Ihatewindowsxp]

Ok, I've tried all the boot combos again after unplugging all USB devices. I get the error just without the 2 lines I just gave. I cannot boot from the Secondary CD drive. What I would like to know is what does the error I receive mean? I don't think that I won't be able to run Puppy or Linux but apparently I need to fiddle with it some before it will work.

I'm wondering if I remove the other drive (oh, BTW my Master drive is an LGB GCC-4521B and my secondary is a Plextor PLexwriter PX-W4012TA) if that might resolve the problem. I don't see any of my hardware shouldn't be compatible for Linux. If I'm wrong please let me know. I would be happy to answer any questions about my hardware or software configuration. I really want to use Puppy. Hopefully we'll be able to figure it out.

Thanks!

[aussie]

As you have tried most options, may I suggest you burn an ISO using a different brand of CD-R. I have had trouble booting up Puppy using a particular brand of CD, changing to a different brand fixed the problem, the make of CD I had problems with was Verbatim.

It's worth a try.

[marksouth2000]

I'm wondering if I remove the other drive (oh, BTW my Master drive is an LGB GCC-4521B and my secondary is a Plextor PLexwriter PX-W4012TA) if that might resolve the problem. I don't see any of my hardware shouldn't be compatible for Linux.

The latter is unlikely. Since we are at the fiddling-with-hardware stage now, please could you check the jumpers on your drives? Linux tends to be sensitive to jumper settings on drives.

Ideally, you should set up the CD so as to to boot from the first drive on the secondary IDE channel.

[Ihatewindowsxp]

Ok, I will give that a try. I burned the ISO onto an old Memorex CD/RW that I'd used many many times before. Maybe that was the issue. I will try and let you know.

Also on the same subject I used the latest version of "BurnCDCC" to burn my ISO. What settings should I use to ensure the best possible copy?

Thanks to all the forum members who are helping me!

[Ihatewindowsxp]

Ok, thanks to the poster that suggested burning the iso onto a different brand of CD-R. It worked great! I got to play with Puppy and I love it! I need one more thing to be fully functional. I connect to the internet via DSL using a USB IAD LAN Modem. How do I set that up?

[Flash]

It's great that you figured out why Puppy wouldn't boot. Can you please tell us the exact brand, etc., of CDs that did and didn't work? That would make the forum ever so much more useful to prospective Puppy users.

Also, you'll find that the forum works much better for you if you start a new thread for your modem question.