Old computer received free, won't boot Puppy CD (Solved)

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veronicathecow · #16 Post by **veronicathecow** » Fri 23 Mar 2007, 17:09

Hi, also your BIOS may have got corrupted, another trick to try is to "Load setup defaults" in your BIOS (Be sure you can set the BIOS back up again properly. This can sometimes clear hidden BIOS setting that have got messed up.
Also your CD may be marginal, perhaps a CD drive cleaning disk might help (assuming the BIOS is set to boot from CD) or have you another CD drive you can swap with?
Have you had any warnings about low CMOS battery, or CMOS corruption? If so CMOS battery may be low.

#17 Post by **Flash** » Fri 23 Mar 2007, 19:05

Stiginge, can you please set your camera to 800 x 600 resolution, or edit your photos before you post them? Thanks.

stiginge · #18 Post by **stiginge** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 20:52

Its not saving to the hdd because every time I shutdown, and restart with or without the cd inside, it goes into puppy, but I still only have 6M of memory in the bottom right hand corner.

It says on the puppy desktop that I should save to hdd, and then restart, and that this will free up more space.

At the moment I don't have enough memory to support any applications.

I have created a partition within the hdd using filesystem EXT2 (there was no EXT3 available for selection).

HairyWill · #19 Post by **HairyWill** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 21:27

How are you shutting down the computer?
When you click
menu-shutdown-shutdown (or restart)
You should be asked some questions about saving your configuration.
Go through this process to create a pup_save file with your settings in.
It would be helpful if you could write down each question you are asked and which response you choose.
When you reboot this file will be used for storage space.

If this doesn't work.
Please post the stuff you wrote down.
Next you boot puppy please open a console window a type in

Code: Select all

fdisk -l

that is a LOWERCASE L NOT ONE.
Post the output here

stiginge · #20 Post by **stiginge** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 21:59

When going to Menu/Shutdown/Restart computer I was given the following questions:

Save to file/Save to disk/Save to cd (chose save to file)

Defrag for windows xp (chose not to)

Choose partition (only one choice listed)
hda1 Filesystem:ext2 Size:9541M Free: M
I selected ok and subsequently system shut down, after some scripts appearing

When I did the fdisk -l command as you stated, I got the following:

Disk/dev/hda: 10.0GB, 10005037056 bytes

16 heads, 63 sectors/track 19386 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda 1 * 1 19386 9770512 83 Linux

HairyWill · #21 Post by **HairyWill** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 22:44

stiginge wrote:When going to Menu/Shutdown/Restart computer I was given the following questions:

Save to file/Save to disk/Save to cd (chose save to file)

Defrag for windows xp (chose not to)

Choose partition (only one choice listed)
hda1 Filesystem:ext2 Size:9541M Free: M
I selected ok and subsequently system shut down, after some scripts appearing

Definitely something wrong there, you should have been asked how big you wanted the file to be.
Try using MUT to mount the disk. Have a look in the folder that is opened when it is mounted, is there a pup_save file there?
Is there anything there?

stiginge · #22 Post by **stiginge** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 22:46

what is MUT or how does it work?

DennisF · #23 Post by **DennisF** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 22:55

On the MENU BAR under FILESYSTEM -> MUT Media Utility Tool.
It may be linked to the DRIVES Icon on the desktop depending on the Puppy version.
-DF

stiginge · #24 Post by **stiginge** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 23:07

When I mounted the cdrom in MUT, in the folder I did not see a pup_save file. However I did see a pup_214 file there.

HairyWill · #25 Post by **HairyWill** » Mon 26 Mar 2007, 23:21

stiginge wrote: hda1 Filesystem:ext2 Size:9541M Free: M

Just looked at this more closely. There is no entry for free disk space, either there is something wrong with the disk/partition or you've uncovered a bug in the save routine.
I'm not sure how many people would have used the save with a single EXT2 partition, it is conceivable that there is a logic error in the routine that calculates the free space. If this is the case using the partition manager to create two smaller partitions instead might help. While you're at it create yourself about 200Mb swap space type 82, at least this will give your programs some headroom to run in, even if it doesn't help you with saving your configuration.

I'm off to sleep. Good luck.

stiginge · #26 Post by **stiginge** » Tue 27 Mar 2007, 13:08

Neither partition manager will allow me to create a new partition.

In Gparted, the 'new' icon on the top is frozen, even after clicking on all parts of the window.

In the other partition manager, there is no option to create a new partition, even when I press 'n' for new partition, it just says that this partition currently in use.

HairyWill · #27 Post by **HairyWill** » Tue 27 Mar 2007, 13:19

The current partition is using the whole of the disk. It will need to be deleted before you can create more smaller ones.

stiginge · #28 Post by **stiginge** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 08:24

I deleted the old partition and created a new one, and I think it saved properly this time.

However, puppy is running VERY slowly. There are 150M of free space (per bottom right-hand corner of desktop), but its taking forever to load webpages or do anything.

HairyWill · #29 Post by **HairyWill** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 08:36

We never did ask what the specs of your computer were.
Go to menu - system -xproc and tell us how much RAM memory you have and what speed the processor is

Bruce B · #30 Post by **Bruce B** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 09:01

HairyWill wrote:We never did ask what the specs of your computer were.
Go to menu - system -xproc and tell us how much RAM memory you have and what speed the processor is

By all means!

Never could figure out what we are dealing with here in terms of hardware.

I'd also want to know what kind of Puppy install is really wanted and what kind of other operating systems stiginge wants to use. With a 10 GB hard drive and my prejudices about XP and Vista, I think, if it were me, I'd want two Linux distros. Puppy as #1 and another partition to play around with other distros.

stiginge · #31 Post by **stiginge** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 11:30

The swap partition I created only has 200M, would this have anything to do with it?

Also, does anybody have a link to the manual for v14?

Bruce B · #32 Post by **Bruce B** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 11:49

I really think 200 mb is sufficent.

It is however possible that the swap partition is not being used.

In order to tell type the free command and read the output.

In order to be more specific, I think what I (we) would like to know the following:

How much RAM do you have?

What kind of Processor to you have? Especially the speed.

Is it true that you have only one hard drive and it is 10GB

What is the entire partitioning scheme?

What other operating systems are you running if any?

If you don't know how to answer these questions, just say so and somebody will tell you.

stiginge · #33 Post by **stiginge** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 13:13

I did the xproc query and found the following:

The machine has a pentium III processor, it had 725.000 after it and I guess this is the speed in Mhz

There is 125000kb total RAM.

I created two other partitions besides the swap, both 5GB.

And there is no other OS installed other than puppy.

My query is: why is puppy running so slowly, it takes 3 minutes + to load any webpage on seamonkey?

And also, why aren't my configs being saved on shutdown? Every time I boot up I have to re-enter the keyboard, xorg/xvesa, screen resolution configurations which means bootup is taking an age.

#34 Post by **Flash** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 14:45

You have 125 MB of RAM, which should be enough to run basic Puppy (Puppy without a large application such as OpenOffice for instance) entirely from RAM.

Your problem with webpages loading slowly may have nothing to do with Puppy itself, but rather its connection to the internet. When you first start SeaMonkey, does it seem to take a long time?

You created two partitions besides the swap partition. How did you format those two partitions? (ext2, ext3, FAT32, NTFS, etc.) If you did not format the partitions with a filesystem, Puppy can't use them.

stiginge · #35 Post by **stiginge** » Wed 28 Mar 2007, 15:03

After clicking on Seamonkey on the desktop, it takes a long time for it to start up, and more time again to load a page that is stored locally, not on the net.

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Old computer received free, won't boot Puppy CD (Solved)