Laptop won't boot puppy! [SOLVED]

[ardvark]

Hi...

Have you tried any other distributions, like Lubuntu, to see if this happens with them. Your situation is highly unusual.

Regards...

[Galbi]

I agree with sheldonisaac
Only one thing, to see if the hard drive it's dyng, try to disconnect it phisically (the power) or at least in-habilitate it from the BIOS.

Then try booting Puppy from a usb stick.

I've used my pc without HD for several months only from a pendrive.

Saludos.

[Valinote]

Ardvark, I'm downloading Lubuntu now and I will give that a try.

Galbi, I have a Puppy USB thumb drive with Precise that boots fine in my old Compaq Presario, but hangs in this newer Dell Studio. The failure mode is the same with the hard drive removed from the laptop.

I was able to partition the drive as Sheldon suggested, and have copied over the initrd.gz, puppy_precise_5.7.1.sfs, and vmlinuz files. Unfortunately, since I can't boot to a live puppy, I can't run the grub4dosconfig utility. Is there a way I could do the same thing manually from a console?

-Steve D

[Ted Dog]

I had a issue like that turned out to be a bad wifi daughter board. Took a long time to determine. But disconnecting it fix the rest and used a USB wifi dongle in its place about 11 dollars at newegg. if you are going to zero a seagate you should try their cd diagnostic toolkit to do so to mark the bad block and really test your drive. It does not try for internet so could help figure if you had same problem as I.

[Ted Dog]

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

I find dos versions work best and very small the windows version requires a bunch of windows optional libraries so the data load is extreme if you keep your windows close to mint ( mine due to lack of use ) it was a big burden for me with slow pay as you go plan that I had at the time.

[Moat]

Maybe the BIOS memory battery (coin cell) is shot? Or BIOS corrupted? Or in need of a BIOS update (...somehow)?

MOBO or other hardware component failure (like TedDog ^ mentioned) seems quite possible.

This does seem unusual, and likely unrelated to the hard drive (although I'm no expert!). I've booted plenty of Puppies (CD or USB stick) on different computers with the HD's removed - no issues whatsoever... straight to the desktop.

Bob

[bigpup]

Trying to boot with a Puppy live CD.

Some ideas to try.

Make sure nothing is plugged into computer.
USB device
sd card
etc....

Run a CD cleaner disc in the CD drive to hopefully make sure there is no dust bunnies or dirt keeping it from reading properly.

Use a CD-R disc not a CD-RW for the Puppy live CD.

You say you ran Memtest86 and it found nothing wrong with memory?

No dust bunnies in the cooling inlet/outlets?

Reset the bios to the default settings.

Using AC power cable to power laptop and is the power cable providing the proper voltage?

What you are describing is usually caused by a bad download of the Puppy iso file or a bad burn of the iso image to the CD.
However, you say the CD will boot OK on other computers.

Make sure to burn no faster than 8X.

Maybe the CD drive has a read speed issue?

Toss computer out window, several times. May not help to get it working, but you will feel better!

[Valinote]

Guys, let me first say how much I appreciate your kind help...8-]

Lubuntu gave me four options: 1. Boot Live CD (hangs after the splash); 2. Install to HDD (same as 1); 3. Test HDD (same as 1) 4. Test RAM (passes with no errors)

Bigpup, nothing is plugged into the laptop except the dc power cable. The failure mode occurs when booting puppy from either the optical drive or a USB flash drive; and they both work find in my presario laptop. When my daughter first gave me the laptop, I removed and cleaned the fan and radiator assembly; so there should be no thermal issues. Memtest86+ passes with flying colors.

Ted Dog, thanks for the pointer to the SeaTools hdd diagnostics. I am running the long test overnight. I might have to bite the bullet at some point and take the laptop apart so that I can disconnect components one at a time...but not ready to go that far yet!

Moat, usually if the bios battery is shot, the settings will always be the default at boot, and any changes you make will not stick through a restart. But I will try resetting it anyway.

Regarding the grub4dosconfig utility. Any way to get the same end result manually from a console terminal? I've created a small bootable linux partition and copied the puppy files to it, but I need to somehow set up the grub. Can anyone guide me through it?

-Steve D

[sheldonisaac]

Regarding the grub4dosconfig utility. Any way to get the same end result manually from a console terminal? I've created a small bootable linux partition and copied the puppy files to it, but I need to somehow set up the grub. Can anyone guide me through it?

Steve D, I asked for help on this at
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 804#799804
Since you are able to put files on that hard drive, apparently with some software on a bootable (Ultimate Bootdisk?) CD, can you somehow find the file grldr and put it on the the first (only?) partition (make it bootable) of the hard drive or bootable USB drive.
And somehow run the software bootlace.com (it supposedly runs (!!) under DOS as well as under Linux).

BOOTLACE writes GRLDR BOOT RECORD to MBR or to the boot area of a file system.
Usage: bootlace.com [OPTIONS] DEVICE_OR_FILE
Options: --read-only, --floppy[=N], --boot-prevmbr-first, --boot-prevmbr-last,
--no-backup-mbr, --force-backup-mbr, --mbr-enable-floppy, --mbr-disable-floppy,
--mbr-enable-osbr, --mbr-disable-osbr, --duce, --time-out=T, --hot-key=K,
--preferred-drive=D, --preferred-partition=P, --sectors-per-track=S, --heads=H,
--start-sector=B, --total-sectors=C, --install-partition=I, --lba, --chs,
--fat12, --fat16, --fat32, --vfat, --ntfs, --ext2, --serial-number=SN,
--restore-mbr, --mbr-no-bpb, --chs-no-tune
DEVICE_OR_FILE: Filename of the device or image. For DOS, a BIOS drive number
(in hex 0xHH or decimal DDD format)can be used to access the drive.

[Valinote]

I ran Seagate's "SeaTools for DOS" long diagnostic hdd test overnight and it found no errors on the hard drive.

Sheldon, I am investigating your glrdr/bootlace suggestion. But I thought puppy used menu.lst in the grub folder to boot?

I'm beginning to suspect that the reason I can't boot or install puppy on this laptop is because the video driver for this particular graphics hardware is not included in the versions of puppy I have tried. I am leaning this direction this because of two reasons:

1. The following three operating systems boot and are usable...
- UBCD based on simple Isolinux/Syslinux
- SeaTools for DOS based on simple FreeDOS Kernel
- PartedMagic with full GTK+ gui based on Linux Kernel 3.10.4

2. I measured the amount of time it takes the optical drive on my Presario to stop spinning on a puppy live boot with pfix=ram, and it is the same amount of time on the Dell Studio; the only difference being that on the Dell, I never see the "Loading drivers needed to access the disk drives..." message, just a blank screen.

The video hardware is the Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 12). Anyone know which puppies have drivers that support this vga controller?

"Toss computer out window, several times..." Hmmmm, I'm almost there!!

-Steve D

[Ted Dog]

yes that can be tricky. fatdog64 631 has a boot option to NOT fire up X windows and allows better diagnostic. Its a 64bit CPU so that could be an option.

[Valinote]

Ok, finally some progress. Selecting Fatdog64 "without graphical desktop" gives me a readable error message I can report while booting the kernel:

Kernal panic - not syncing: Timeout synchronizing machine check over CPUs. Shutting down CPUs with NMI. Rebooting in 30 seconds...

Any thoughts?

-Steve D

[sheldonisaac]

I ran Seagate's "SeaTools for DOS" long diagnostic hdd test overnight and it found no errors on the hard drive.

Sheldon, I am investigating your glrdr/bootlace suggestion. But I thought puppy used menu.lst in the grub folder to boot?

Near the top of the 3.2 million hits from an Internet search for "bootloader Linux" was
http://www.linux.org/threads/linux-bootloaders.4489/
For the past several years, all I've used is GRUB, and the convenience program grub4dosconfig by shinobar.
Once the primary loader, eg grldr (I guess) is installed (on a bootable hard drive, USB flashdrive, whatever), like into the master boot record of the device, the BIOS boot probably finds it somehow.
grldr looks in some prescribed order for menu.lst, on whatever storage devices; like an sda1, sda2, etc

I'm beginning to suspect that the reason I can't boot or install puppy on this laptop is because the video driver for this particular graphics hardware is not included in the versions of puppy I have tried. I am leaning this direction this because of two reasons:

1. The following three operating systems boot and are usable...
- UBCD based on simple Isolinux/Syslinux
- SeaTools for DOS based on simple FreeDOS Kernel
- PartedMagic with full GTK+ gui based on Linux Kernel 3.10.4

Yes, that seems reasonable.

[ardvark]

Ok, finally some progress. Selecting Fatdog64 "without graphical desktop" gives me a readable error message I can report while booting the kernel:

Kernal panic - not syncing: Timeout synchronizing machine check over CPUs. Shutting down CPUs with NMI. Rebooting in 30 seconds...

Any thoughts?

Yes, I'm not sure at this point if this is really a video driver issue. I researched your error message a bit and found this thread which led to this page, where you can try Intel's processor stress test utility, which might be of help. I also found this thread from someone who had a similar problem.

I could be wrong but my suspicion is that this is a processor/motherboard issue which, if so, would require a motherboard replacement. This would make sense as, if I remember correctly, your daughter said she was constantly experiencing BSOD's using Windows 7. You might want to take it to a repair shop to see if they can perform some diagnostics on it to confirm my thoughts. I think in most cases, if not all, it's just cheaper to buy a new computer.

Regards...

[Galbi]

If you enter in the Setup, isn't there an option like: Load default values or Load optimal values?

[Valinote]

Ok, lots of news here. Just want you to know that all your brainstorming was not in vain.

Fatdog is alive and running!!! One of the threads that ardvark pointed me to suggested turning off acpi during boot. So I took Galbi's advice and looked for alternate fatdog boot parameters and found "acpi=off". From the referenced thread...

This will tell the kernel not to use the bios' Advanced Configuration and Power Management interrupt routing table, but rather to create it's own. The machine will try to boot, and hopefully, will succeed.

So the bottom line right now is I can only boot with acpi turned off; and it doesn't work every time. Does this indicate a defective bios? Should I try reflashing?

The other thread advark pointed me to suggested downloading the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool; and I found a live Fedora linux version for USB. However that hung while booting, so I made a cd of the same iso thinking there might be a timing issue. Still didn't work, however I again tried again setting "acpi=off" and was successful in booting to the Fedora environment. I've run the processor utility now multiple times and it fails the Base Clock Test intermittently.

Does that indicate a bad cpu?

So that's where I'm at tonight. I see used i3 processors on ebay for ~$30-ish. Maybe that would be worth a shot.

Oh, one other thing--> Turning Intel SpeedStep off in the bios doesn't seem to help.

-Steve D

[wyzguy]

Try "pci=noacpi" instead of "acpi=off" or maybe try both.

[ardvark]

So the bottom line right now is I can only boot with acpi turned off; and it doesn't work every time. Does this indicate a defective bios? Should I try reflashing?

I don't believe so but if you do want to try it, be extremely careful, as flashing your system with the wrong BIOS code can effectively kill your computer completely.

The other thread advark pointed me to suggested downloading the Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool; and I found a live Fedora linux version for USB. However that hung while booting, so I made a cd of the same iso thinking there might be a timing issue. Still didn't work, however I again tried again setting "acpi=off" and was successful in booting to the Fedora environment. I've run the processor utility now multiple times and it fails the Base Clock Test intermittently.

Does that indicate a bad cpu?

It sure sounds like it but, again, I would recommend taking it to a local repair shop to make sure.

So that's where I'm at tonight. I see used i3 processors on ebay for ~$30-ish. Maybe that would be worth a shot.

No, it quite possibly wouldn't. In laptops, most CPU's are soldered on to the motherboard and cannot be removed or replaced. You would need to check with Dell to make sure that your model of laptop has that capability. Even if the CPU is replaceable, that is no guarantee, since this could also be a motherboard issue.

However, if it is replaceable and you want to try it anyway, make sure you are getting the right processor for your particular motherboard and that the seller offers a return policy in case your problem is the motherboard.

Regards...

[Valinote]

The following boot options: acpi=off; pci=noacpi; and nolapic, all work singularly and allow me to successfully boot fatdog or precise.

But wireless isn't working. When attempting to scan for available wifi networks in either puppy, I get the following error...

"SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill."

-Steve D

[sheldonisaac]

The following boot options: acpi=off; pci=noacpi; and nolapic, all work singularly and allow me to successfully boot fatdog or precise.

GREAT!! I'm glad you were able to solve it

But wireless isn't working. When attempting to scan for available wifi networks in either puppy, I get the following error...

"SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill."

I'd never heard about that before, but looked it up with a search at
http://wellminded.net63.net/
I think one of the top hits suggested something like rfkill list all

and if the wireless interface is shown as blocked, do something like rfkill unblock all from a command prompt.
Or use the wireless switch on your computer, if it has one.
If it turns out to be necessary, put the unblocking command in, perhaps, /etc/rc.d/rc.local