Installing Puppy linux on HP compaq

Booting, installing, newbie
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drams1
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Location: Bloomington IN

#16 Post by drams1 »

Thanks for all the advice. Sorry I have been away for about 6 hours because our power went out so I could not get online. It was just restored. Sorry I didn't complete my profile. I have added location of Bloomington IN.

I will disconnect the hard drive and try again. I think I have another keyboard I can use for testing.

The disc drive is a Sony DVD/RW that I used to burn the Puppy Linux.

Just to clarify, I am working with two different computers, one that I am trouble shooting which is a self built , with ASUS P4S800FX MB, with Pentium 4 hyper threading CPU. 1 GB of memory, Sony DVD/RW drive, and 200GB IBM Desk Star HDD (Which seems to be toast) I have 6GB HDD installed in attempt to install fresh Windows XP.

The other is the HP Compaq that I am using to burn the CD and communicate to this forum.

starhawk
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#17 Post by starhawk »

Ah... IBM DeskStar. AKA IBM DeathStar ;) for a reason! Junk that thing, it's definitely hosed.

Is the IBM hard drive IDE or SATA?

drams1
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#18 Post by drams1 »

HD is IDE.

I disconnected the hard drive and tried booting again but no success. I got this message: ISO Linux 4.05 0X50328bd7 ETCDisolinux:Disc error 01, AX=4200 drive ff

Boot Failed

This is my last post tonight. I will be out tomorrow morning but will be back trying to figure this out in the afternoon.

Thanks for all your help.

starhawk
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#19 Post by starhawk »

*facepalm* don't throw away that HDD just yet.

...do you have a spare optical (CD/DVD) drive? If so, try it. If it doesn't work at first, burn a new CD with it, and try again. I recommend using ImgBurn, it's free and awesome. Until I went Puppy full-time, it was my burning software of choice.

For the rest of you -- I've had problems with those before, one example of which stands the test of time as the strangest issue I've ever had with a PC. It was a P3 Gateway box, with a CD-RW that was so screwed up it actually corrupted the CD I was trying to boot from -- I ended up replacing both CD and drive to make it work. I've heard that some early CD-RW drives had two lasers, one for read, one for write. The write laser must've been stuck 'on' and was writing garbage to the disc as it was being read...

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Fossil
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#20 Post by Fossil »

If you have physically disconnected the hard drive and there are still errors - one other thing stands out: Can you be 100 percent certain that the CD/DVD drive is working correctly? Bad burns, bad reads will also create a whole mess of problems. Try swapping the CD/DVD from one machine to the other. Confirm that it's functional.
And I still advocate BurnCDCC. It does just one thing - burn an ISO - nothing else. Also, burn very slowly. I'd never use a 32-speed burn. On older machines with a possibly dodgy CD drive that's just asking for problems.
Also, please swap out that keyboard.

@starhawk
I've heard that some early CD-RW drives had two lasers, one for read, one for write.
Correct. Sometimes the one laser would fail giving read-only. It happened to me.

drams1
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#21 Post by drams1 »

I used cdcc to burn slacko puppy again at 8x speed. I tried booting with disc again with three different drives and each time there would be a message that puppy was being loaded in ram. (I used different ram sticks as well) Eventually there would be a kernel panic and the program would stall.

I don't know where to go from here. It seems that puppy will not help me with this unit. It is disconcerting that I can not find out what component is causing this problem.

I never got a blue screen error but I am new with Puppy so maybe that is not a possibility with what I am trying with the booting attempts.

It looks like I am going to have to give up and start with a new mother board and the components that I have and go from there.

drams1
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#22 Post by drams1 »

Maybe I should try a different version of Puppy Linux.

starhawk
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#23 Post by starhawk »

You are still using Slacko 5.7?

Download this and run it on Windows --> http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/hash_my_files.html

Put the ISO file (Puppy you downloaded) into it, and make sure that the "MD5Sum" field/column matches one of these two:

Code: Select all

9ab896cfa0d915afe7ad2f1f4c2042b2 - slacko-5.7-NO-pae.iso
00e397091adfddae1102afdd4eb367b9 - slacko-5.7.0-PAE.iso
Of course the name should also match ;)

EDIT: made link clickable. Also -- I've used HashMyFiles before, it rocks. My version is likely pretty old tho.

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greengeek
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#24 Post by greengeek »

What kind of CD are you burning to? I would recommend using a CDR only - make sure it is a reasonable brand and burn at 4x speed only.

As far as an alternative puppy goes - I highly recommend the original "thin" version of Slacko: thread here as it has a good kernel and I have found it extremely reliable across a range of hardware.

And if you still have problems - remove one ram stick (if possible) and get down to one GB. That is still plenty for puppy, and it might help you troubleshoot if you have one bad stick of ram, or some kind of ram timing mismatch or a bad slot.

drams1
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#25 Post by drams1 »

I have to admit that I lost with the last response. My experience is assembling computers and installing windows and replacing components when they fail if I can't determine the culprit. This is what I am in the middle of now. Someone suggested that Puppy Linux would allow me to get my computer running and perhaps be able to determine what is causing blue screen errors. So far I have not been able to get Puppy Linux to run.

I don't know what hash my files is about and I don't know what "MD5Sum" means or what the information under the Code: in the post means.

All I can say to everyone is thanks for the help.

drams1
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#26 Post by drams1 »

What I really need is someone to tell me if I am using the best version of Puppy Linux and what would cause it not to boot my unit from CD.

I would seem to me the issue would have to be hardware related since Puppy Linux is being loaded into memory and there is no other software that could interfere with that loading. Of course there could be a corrupted Puppy Linux system on the CD but I have used slow burn to minimize errors and have no reason to suspect my disc drive is bad.

starhawk
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#27 Post by starhawk »

The MD5Sum is a way of verifying whether or not your download was corrupt. If you do what I suggested with HashMyFiles (on Windows), and the gobbledeegook in the "MD5Sum" column that it spits out for the ISO file you downloaded (the CD Image) matches the relevant line of alphanumeric gunk in the "code" tag, your download is not the culprit because it is correct.

As for "best" -- there's no single answer to that other than "flame war" ;) there are literally thousands of Pups, both official Puppies and community-created Puplets (I use that vocabulary to distinguish the two -- I'm not sure it's an official differentiation, though). What's "best" for you is not what's "best" for me, necessarily.

I'm typing this on X-Slacko 2.1. It's a resource hog but I've decided that some measure of prettiness (and not having to put up with some of ROX-Filer's strange, strange keyboard shortcuts aka keybindings) is worth the performance penalty I pay. It's still faster than WinXP or Win7!

I've also used Upup Raring 3992 (had some ACPI-related issues that were quite severe) and Slacko 57 with a different GUI tacked on (MATE, which is a fork (continuation by a separate split-off group) of GNOME 2 after GNOME 2 became GNOME 3 and everyone hated it). I've also also used earlier versions of X-Slacko, as well as TurboPup Xtreme (it's not that great IMO), Puplite 5.0, and many others that I can't recall.

Really the only way to determine the "best" Puppy for you, is to download a fat pile and try them all out.

:idea: Idea :idea: I have a known-good CD burner. I may have two -- one I haven't tested yet. I can burn you a bunch of CDs and send them to you in a Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope. (I'm in NC.) I'd ask you to pay postage, but that's all... it'd be $6 even (it's actually a little less, but it's easier for everyone involved to round up to the nearest dollar). If you're interested, PM me and we'll work things out. I've sent stuff to people on this forum before. I also do more selling on another forum (a computer enthusiasts site called [H]ard|Forum), and there's a review site for these things, which I use on [H]ard|Forum (but not on here, because I hardly ever do this sort of thing here). My page on that site is here.

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Galbi
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#28 Post by Galbi »

greengeek wrote:And if you still have problems - remove one ram stick (if possible) and get down to one GB. That is still plenty for puppy, and it might help you troubleshoot if you have one bad stick of ram, or some kind of ram timing mismatch or a bad slot.
Please, follow this advice.

Test one memory stick at a time, in one slot, then, in the other.

I had two memory sticks in the PC I'm writing this, 512mb and 256mb. And experienced strange hangs. Did what greengeek suggests and found that the 256mb was the cause.

Now with 512mb runs well without hangs.
Remember: [b][i]"pecunia pecuniam parere non potest"[/i][/b]

drams1
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#29 Post by drams1 »

I did as you said and downloaded Hash m file utility and with add file I added Slacko Puppy ISO, and the MD5 is exactly the same as in your post. So from what you said the download is correct. So, can assume a corrupted file is not the reason for the Slacko Puppy Linux from booting my computer.

Does that mean I have some kind of a hardware problem. I have tried new memory, one memory stick different slots etc. all with no success. I also tried 3 different CD drives while trying to boot up.

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bigpup
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#30 Post by bigpup »

Look for obvious damage on motherboard. (bulging capacitors)

Bad capacitors can cause all kinds of problems.
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The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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bigpup
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#31 Post by bigpup »

Slacko 5.7 is designed to support very new hardware, but it does still work on some very old stuff.

I would suggest trying with Lucid Puppy 5.2.8.005, but you say you have tried it and it will not boot.

Have to ask.

Are you sure the memory you are trying to use is compatible with the motherboard?
Properly setup in the motherboard bios settings?

If you boot into the computer bios setup.
Does the memory show up and appear to have the proper settings?
Using the wrong, memory bios settings, can cause all kinds of problems.

Reset computer bios to default settings.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

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Fossil
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#32 Post by Fossil »

drams1. To recap. The original storyline:
I have been trouble shooting this computer for a few days. I have installed a new hard drive which I thought was good and was able to install a fresh windows xp with difficulty because I get random blue screen errors that stops install.
The very fact that errors occur with both Windows and Puppy signifies it isn't the operating system, more likely either memory or motherboard related. At the current age, it's likely to be capacitors, a crack in the motherboard or even a faulty CPU. Have you tried grounding yourself via a metal water pipe, etc, then gently pressing down on any socket mounted components. The same holds true for the CPU.
While clutching at straws (!), by any chance is the computer's clock keeping good time, or is showing a month/year off? If so, this might be battery timer-related.
Finally, what of the video display and sound - are they bog-standard original components? Have you installed any other cards - for any other purpose, printers etc, other than those which came mounted on the original motherboard?
Edit. By any chance have you attempted to update and flash the BIOS? Could a previous owner have done so? There are accounts of problems with flash updated BIOS with this motherboard

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wimpy
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#33 Post by wimpy »

There really was no point in swapping to Slacko. Lucid is a good goto distro for your CPU. When you suspect multiple failures, RAM and HDD and CDROM, your first port of call should be the PSU. If the rail voltage is down (PSUs contain capacitors too) you may find the kind of errors you are getting.
I think you need a plan of action. Take your Lucid disk and run it in a different PC with a decent amount of RAM - 1GB would be ample. Fire it up and see if it gets to the puppy desktop.
If it does, you know that the CDROM and CD are OK. Elect not to save when you exit from the desktop. A word of warning - sometimes puppies get confused with large monitors. If you get an "Out of Range" warning and a black screen, hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace which should get you to the #prompt. You can then run xorgwizard and eventually xwin into the puppy desktop.
Once you determine that you have a good CD and a good CDROM drive, try them in the target PC - you can disconnect the HDD if you like. If puppy hangs you now know that you have a fault on your PC.
From what you said you are used to swapping parts , so I would begin with the PSU and work on from there. Good luck. :)
LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal

Sylvander
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#34 Post by Sylvander »

drams1 wrote:...install a fresh windows xp with difficulty because I get random blue screen errors that stops install.
1. I believe those BSOD's can be caused by the Windows [XP in this case, issued Oct 2001?] not having drivers for the hardware [in this case manufactured in 2004].
Get it!? How can a 2001 OS include drivers for 2004 hardware?
There are a number of ways of dealing with that problem.
The best method [but not the easiest] is:
a. Slipstreaming Windows XP To Create a Bootable Windows XP CD or DVD [Never done it myself if my memory isn't failing]

OR...
b. The easy way:
Is to make a driver floppy for your hardware [if your PC has a FDD]...
And hit F6 at the correct moment during installation using the XP install CD.

OR...
c. The Windows way:
Provided the hardware for which there are no drivers is not VITAL to the functionality...
You power-off at the BSOD...
Power back on, and continue the installation.
Windows automatically by-passes the problem item of hardware and continues the install.
This is repeated for each item of hardware for which there is no driver, until the install finally completes.
Once into Windows you then install the missing drivers.

2. To check that the hardware is functional:
find some OS that succeeds in booting.
a. I've forgotten the Linux distro that has most drivers included [Knoppix?].
If it works OK there's nothing wrong with your hardware.
This is why I suggested Boxpup-431.

drams1
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#35 Post by drams1 »

"I think you need a plan of action. Take your Lucid disk and run it in a different PC with a decent amount of RAM - 1GB would be ample. Fire it up and see if it gets to the puppy desktop. "

I took Wimpy's advice and burned a copy of Lucid Puppy and tried in on this working computer and could not get it to boot. Got this message:Performing switch root to layered file system. kernel Panic - not syncing attempted to kill Init!

I must be doing something wrong because I can't get puppy to boot on good computer.

I also tried booting a laptop and got the same message and stall.

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