Puppy Precise 5.7.1 Live Disk Boot Freeze

[Marley]

Hi,
I've been using Precise 5.7.1 on live disk DVDs for about a year now (before that I had installed on hard drive but switched to live disks as I figured out hardware etc - long story) -

The motherboard on the computer I'm using is an Asus M2A-VM and I never had a problem with the live disk until today - very strange -

The system froze and I ended up having to shut off the machine which I know the live disk doesn't like because I did it once before and got an error message on the next boot up ('you shut down improperly . . . ' and a prompt to run xorgwizard or ignore) -

I don't actually understand how a live disk would even register the improper shut down since I wasn't saving though possibly the disk could have autosaved? - if anyone can enlighten me on that it would be great - but it's not really part of the situation or maybe it is??

Anyway, today, after the freeze, I tried to boot up again and got to the friendly puppy face screen with the words at the bottom that said press F2 or F3 or wait 5 seconds for normal startup.

Well, I waited - and waited - but nothing happened - so I F2'd and tried an option - which didn't work but the vmlinux (not sure if that's the right spelling) started up and Precise 5.7.1 came up after a normal amount of time. No other error messages or anything.

I tried a few of the live disks other than the one I had been using when things froze and the same situation occured - a freeze up at the 'wait 5 seconds for normal boot up' part.

Weird thing is - I loaded a live disk I had of Puppy Arcade - some versionI had once tried - and there was no waiting - everything booted up no problem.

What I can't figure out is - why just Precise 5.7.1? It seems like my mobo has a something against 5.7.1 at this point - if I could find any old live disks I would try them as I had Lucid on live at some point - but until then - any help would be appreciated -

How do I get puppy 5.7.1 to keep loading past 'wait five seconds'? Without having to resort to F2 or F3?

Thanks -

I never had a problem with the disks until today.



When

[ally]

is arcade on a cd or dvd

maybe dvd drive not reading correctly?

[Marley]

Hi,

arcade is on a cd, I think (I'm not the most methodical when testing - ok, that's an understatment!) -

But it's either CD or DVD - and weirdly, I found Lucid 5.2 and Wary 5.5 - both on CD - and Wary did the same thing - stopped at that point where you press F2 or F3 to get help and wouldn't continue booting -

But Lucid continued and loaded no problem - very strange!

And then, by chance, I was trying, hope against hope to load Precise via USB- again after I figured out earlier today the mobo probably doesn't let you boot via usb - grrr - drat! - nothing listed int the setup menus for it anyway - but I thought - maybe I was wrong - maybe the 'removeable' selection in the menu would let the computer recognize the usb - but no, it didn't - but what happened is it checked the CD/DVD afterwards as I'd selected 1st removeable then CD/DVD and nothing after that (the HDD has WinXP which I didn't want loading as I figured this out) and had this boot failure message come up because I hadn't put a disk in the drive.

When I saw the boot failure message I opened the drive like it asked and put in the Precise disc - loaded no problem - Weird!

It was like it needed a boot failure to proceed without question??

Unfortunately whatever might have remembered the next time didn't and after a shut down of the computer - same thing happened as before the boot failure - ie the boot stopped at the F2/F3 spot where it says 'just wait 5 seconds for a normal startup'.

Very odd. I'm going to try a different computer tomorrow. I just can't figure out why it all happened. I'm hoping maybe the computer's just hot - I've been running it all day - nothing heavy but my apartment is quite hot and humid - but why would Lucid 5.2 be ok and Arcade? Strange don't you think?

[ally]

dvd uses a finer than the cd, first step would be to run a disc cleaner through the drive, if that doesn't work very gently clean the laser with alcohol and a cotton bud (q-tip)

if that fails then you may need to invest in a new drive

[headfound]

Hi,
First question - is the hard drive in the computer the same one that you previouusly installed precise to? (the dvd may be booting the hard drive install)

Second question - have you tried typing 'puppy pfix=ram' at the 5 second boot prompt (which would give you a completely clean boot)?

Third question - why not use a frugal install? Very quick to set up and boots much faster (and if required you can set it up not to save anything at shutdown)

[bigpup]

Also, check the disc for scratches and dirt.

Just to test and see what happens.
Boot one of the Puppy disks that works a few times.
See if it hangs.

Could just make a new disc of Precise 5.7.1
Burn at a slow speed.
( 8 or less)

CD/DVD disks do go bad.