Problem with Puppy Linux on Dell Latitude C800 Laptop

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swill8295 · #1 Post by **swill8295** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:27

I have a Dell Latitude C800 laptop with a 1 ghz PIII, 256 Mb of ram, 10 gig hdd, Linksys WPC54G PCMCIA wifi card, and an ATI Mobility M4 graphics adapter.

I downloaded the most recent Puppy Linux ISO (pup-431.iso) and burnt it to a CD-R. I originally booted from the CD normally on the laptop and puppy loaded up great. I connected to my wireless router through the wifi just fine, and was able to browse the net. I started to have problems when I decided to install puppy to the hdd. I did everything, formatting an ext3 partition just for puppy. I also configured grub to work on the MBR (and later on the superblock, or whatever they called it, just to see if it would make a difference). After installing it on the hdd, I restarted the computer and went through the configuration once more, and everything seemed fine. Then I decided to see how puppy would handle me shutting the laptop and going into suspend. It seemed to recognize that I shut the lid, and I could hear the hdd start to spin when I opened it, but the display would not come back. It seemed to have hung. I was forced to do a cold reboot without shutting down properly. After rebooting, puppy loaded some modules and said something about detecting an optical drive, and then all of a sudden it just stops and leaves me with a command prompt with just a # sign. It would not load the GUI. I tried reinstalling puppy twice to see if I was just having bad luck, and the same thing happened. The suspend would hang after reawakening, and I could not get back into puppy after reboot.

Has anyone had a problem like this? I really like puppy more than any other Linux I've ever used so far, and I absolutely hate that I'm having these problems with it because it runs excellently on this laptop otherwise. I really wish it was more reliable. I don't want another big, giant, memory hogging linux flavor like ubuntu, linux mint, or fedora on this laptop ever again (not that I don't like those flavors on a newer computer). Is there maybe another more stable OS that would work well on this laptop with this configuration that can be recommended? I would be very grateful to anyone that could help me.

knuesel · #2 Post by **knuesel** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:38

too weird. i am trying to get puppy to install on hdd on a DELL LATITUDE C800. can't get grub to do mbr. another post said don t do grub....

if you want me to try use your steps to see it works on my c800...

email me sklee333@yahoo.com or call 7166626082

ps can't find a linux compatible wireless pci / usb card / where did you buy yours?

swill8295 · #3 Post by **swill8295** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:46

Well, it sounds like you're having better luck than me. Have you tried using ndiswrapper? All you need is the inf files and wifi drivers for the card, and you point ndiswrapper to them and install them. You'll reboot and then you will probably start to be able to detect networks. I did that earlier on mint 7 on this laptop, but it should work for puppy too.

knuesel · #4 Post by **knuesel** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:49

dont know how to do this: point ndiswrapper to them

swill8295 · #5 Post by **swill8295** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 13:57

You will want to have your windows XP wifi drivers with their .inf handy. Then you open up ndiswrapper and click on '+Install New Driver' and navigate to your directory that has the windows XP drivers and .inf in it and open the .inf. After that, you will probably need to reboot, and then you will start detecting networks (if you can reboot at this point).

Btw, I don't know where this card was from since I got it with this laptop at a garage sale. You can get the Linksys WPC54G that I have for around 50 dollars (or less) at places like amazon.com. But a lot of wifi cards with windows drivers should work thorugh ndiswrapper.

knuesel · #6 Post by **knuesel** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 14:05

don t know how to open up ndiswrapper

knuesel · #7 Post by **knuesel** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 14:07

i can not get puppy to to do a full install on hdd

swill8295 · #8 Post by **swill8295** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 14:10

I guess we'll have to wait around for someone that knows ways around these problems. I wish I could help you.

swill8295 · #9 Post by **swill8295** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 16:05

Well, it turns out I figured out the answer to one of my own problems. Silly me! The # wasn't a problem! All I had to do was type in xwin and it loaded the GUI.

Now the only problem I have left is this suspend hang.

I could be seeing things, but puppy seems more stable on the hdd instead of running of the live cd. I am really enjoying this OS so far. Still have a few things to iron out though.

knuesel · #10 Post by **knuesel** » Tue 15 Dec 2009, 21:35

can't get puppy to fully install on the hdd. tried to follow these directions...but it does not tell you how to install agrub...

Or do you want Puppy to be the primary bootloader? This will involve installing GRUB, which Puppy can do automatically. Windows will now run as an option from the GRUB boot menu. However, because GRUB is a Linux product, this will only work if you have installed Puppy into its own partition. And the partition must be formatted using a Linux-compatible filesystem such as ext2.

The PUI will refuse to install GRUB in a FAT or NTFS partition, because it assumes that the partition contains Windows. Watch for the cryptic error message "This partition is not Linux".

Now we get to the MBR issue. The quickest out-of-the-box solution is to install GRUB on the MBR of your hard drive. The PUI will warn you about the dangers. But this is only an issue if you want to return your machine to a Windows-only setup in the future. In which case, you would simply run the "fixmbr" procedure.

swill8295 · #11 Post by **swill8295** » Wed 16 Dec 2009, 04:42

Are you attempting to do a full install of linux on the whole harddrive or are you installing alongside windows or some other os?

I noticed that if I do a frugal installation of puppy, it will not give me the option to configure GRUB bootloader. However, if I do a full install, I not only can reconfigure the partition table and format everything in ext2 or ext3 filesystem, I get to configure GRUB bootloader at the end. When I intall GRUB, it gives me 3 options, installation on MBR, installation on superblock, and installation or usb.

rjbrewer · #12 Post by **rjbrewer** » Wed 16 Dec 2009, 05:02

Full install video:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 782#201565

Inexpensive usb wifi:

http://www.meritline.com/wireless-mini- ... 33917.aspx

swill8295:

A frugal install requires manual grub configuration;
Full install does it automatically.

knuesel · #13 Post by **knuesel** » Wed 16 Dec 2009, 15:33

how do you do this on puppy 4.31 : "Then you open up ndiswrapper and click on '+Install New"

swill8295 · #14 Post by **swill8295** » Wed 16 Dec 2009, 17:04

I found out it's a bit different in puppy. In puppy, actually you have to go to puppy setup, then 'connect to the internet or intranet'. Then in the next screen click on 'Internet by network or wireless lan'. Then click on 'load module'. There should be a tab on the top of that window now that says 'ndiswrapper'. Click on it and follow the directions from there.

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Problem with Puppy Linux on Dell Latitude C800 Laptop

Problem with Puppy Linux on Dell Latitude C800 Laptop

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