Slow boot

[gt-i]

I've tried to speed up my old Pentium III/500MHz 620 Mb RAM by installing puppy. Works nicely when running, but the boot-part "loading the 'pup-431.sfs' main file... copying to ram" takes around 20! minutes. The computer is too old for USB-boot so I use the puppy-CD for booting.

Windows 98 runs fairly good on the computer an XP works but takes time booting and working with.

Any ideas?

[rjbrewer]

I've tried to speed up my old Pentium III/500MHz 620 Mb RAM by installing puppy. Works nicely when running, but the boot-part "loading the 'pup-431.sfs' main file... copying to ram" takes around 20! minutes. The computer is too old for USB-boot so I use the puppy-CD for booting.

Windows 98 runs fairly good on the computer an XP works but takes time booting and working with.

Any ideas?

What type of "installation" did you do that requires the cd to boot?
A computer with these specs using a frugal or full install should
boot in less than a minute.

[trio]

I've tried to speed up my old Pentium III/500MHz 620 Mb RAM by installing puppy. Works nicely when running, but the boot-part "loading the 'pup-431.sfs' main file... copying to ram" takes around 20! minutes. The computer is too old for USB-boot so I use the puppy-CD for booting.

Windows 98 runs fairly good on the computer an XP works but takes time booting and working with.

Any ideas?

What type of "installation" did you do that requires the cd to boot?
A computer with these specs using a frugal or full install should
boot in less than a minute.

The key words are "The computer is too old for USB-boot so I use the puppy-CD for booting"

Your cd reader is slow, not puppy's fault

[gt-i]

The key words are "The computer is too old for USB-boot so I use the puppy-CD for booting"

I have choosen to save all files on my ext3 partition harddrive. The reason the CD still is needed is to boot to puppy, since I have not fixet the grub startup menu yet. (no point using puppy if the boot takes forever )

Still the CD is a 40x reader, which should load a 100 Mb file faster than 20 minutes?

I use full installation since I have a 4 Gb harddrive for the puppy reason in the computer.

[bugman]

20 minutes is crazy, my last computer [since died] was not too different from yours, there must be some hardware issue somewhere

[Lobster]

Any ideas?

Turn off hard disk booting (in BIOS) and boot from CD only
If still slow then we can ascertain that the boot and search though
your configuration is slow

Do you have loads of partitions?

I seem to remember somewhere that loads of partitions could slow down Puppy on older hardware as it searched through the
partitions for boot files . . .

[murmelbahn]

I use the puppy-CD for booting

I use full installation

This doesn't sound quite right.

Three ways to run Puppy: Live CD, frugal install, or full install.

In case you're running from Live CD, which is what you're doing ??? - telling from quote #1 - there should be maximum one Puppy file on the HD and that's the pupsave file. I don't know but maybe the full installation which obviously is also present ??? - telling from quote #2 - interferes with the Live CD and slows down the boot. Just guessing. Try booting off the Live CD with no Puppy files on the harddisk.
Or start from Live CD with boot code "puppy pfix=ram" (wait for CD to spin up, then press F2 when boot splash screen is on, now type "puppy pfix=ram", press Enter).

JR

[Frank Cox]

Maybe it is the cd? I have had some weird experiences with a particular cd not wanting to boot, I never waited more than 3 or 4 minutes before shutting down so it may have done what yours did.

Here is what I would try. Unplug all the drives , download a fresh iso file and burn it . Then boot off the cd only. If that works make an empty file in Geany and name it ATAHD and put it on the partition with the Puppy files.This should help it find the install.
If it does not try another cd player. Also I would use a cd-r to boot with.
I would format a partition to ext3 if you have not already to put the Puppy files in.
If that works plug in the other drives {if any} one by one and then reboot.

Probably a dumb question but if it asks which PupSave file to use and you don't tell it that would cause problems.

I have put puppy on numerous machines, several not nearly as fast as yours with less than half the ram and none of them have taken more than a minute to boot. It is either the cd itself, the cd player, the main board, or the hard drive. It cannot be the software unless you have a corrupted copy, which is possible.

[yorkiesnorkie]

I have choosen to save all files on my ext3 partition harddrive. The reason the CD still is needed is to boot to puppy, since I have not fixet the grub startup menu yet. (no point using puppy if the boot takes forever )

If I focus on the above statement: Your running off the Live CD and saving the pupsave-name.2fs file session to ext3. However you have not actually installed puppy and got a working grub menu. Is that correct?

We need to know which Windows OS is on the PC, and if you want to keep it. Then we can help you get Puppy actually installed, where it will run much faster, and sort out your Grub Menu so that you can boot the pc without using the live CD.

Yorkiesnorkie

[gt-i]

I have two windows on the computer, 98 and Xp. I tried the "ram" which gives me a fast boot but since there is no "save file" on the CD I will have to do the installation every time. Then I tried FRUGAL, on the windows harddrive, and the boot time is down to around 50 sec, good enough! I guess I can cut a couple of secs by fixing the grub, getting rid of the CD.

Thank you all for your help. I get back with the new boot-time if/when I have fixed the boot-menu.