Laptop won't boot puppy! [SOLVED]

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Valinote · #1 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 00:29

Hi all! I've been beating my head against the wall with this problem for a few days now and I'm fresh out of ideas. I would greatly appreciate your kind advice. Here is the system:

Dell Studio 1458 Laptop
Intel Corei3 M330 2.13GHz
3GB DDR3 SDRAM (1 x 1GB + 1 x 2GB)
Seagate Momentus 250GB 7200RPM SATA HDD

I'm trying to boot from a live Puppy CD. I've tried Precise 5.7.1, Slacko 5.7 PAE, and Slacko 5.7 non-PAE without any luck. They all hang in the same place:

Loading vmlinux.....
Loading intrd.gz....ready.

Then the screen goes black with a flashing cursor in the upper left corner, the CD stops spinning and the system hangs.

I have also tried "puppy pfix=ram" which provides the following hint before the aforementioned failure sequence occurs:

DESKTOP FAIL: Black-screen/hangs, press reset or hold power button down 4 seconds. Next bootup will force run of video wizard. Choose alternate drive settings.

Holding the power button for the suggested 4 seconds merely cycles the power and the failure mode is the same.

The CDs all boot successfully in our other laptops or in our desktop computers. I have also created a bootable USB thumb drive with the different puppy versions mentioned above and the results were the same.

At this point I'm stuck and don't know how to proceed. Thank you in advance for any advice...8-]

-Steve D

ardvark · #2 Post by **ardvark** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 01:13

Hi...

Just out of curiosity, since this appears to be a 64 bit system, do you get the same problem with Fatdog?

Regards...

smokey01 · #3 Post by **smokey01** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 02:24

It may also be a graphic card problem. Try booting with:
pfix=nox
You wont get a desktop but it will help isolate the problem.
If you get a flashing prompt you could try typing xorgwizard and then select a different driver.
Keep reporting your progress and someone will likely help you.
Good luck.

Galbi · #4 Post by **Galbi** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 02:25

Try booting with:

pfix=nox

so it doesn't load the X (the graphical server).

If it gives you a prompt in text mode run: xorgwizard

Saludos.

Valinote · #5 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 03:40

Thank you so much for the quick replies.

"Try booting with: pfix=nox so it doesn't load the X (the graphical server)."

I did this and the end result was the same; i.e. the boot stalls at a black screen with a flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner. No characters show up on the screen when I type.

Just out of curiosity, since this appears to be a 64 bit system, do you get the same problem with Fatdog?

Will download Fatdog and give it a try.

I appreciate all your suggestions!

-Steve D

smokey01 · #6 Post by **smokey01** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 04:11

Steve are you able to boot anything on this computer?
You may have a crook mobo or maybe bad ram. Try turing your computer off and reseating you ram two or three times. Be careful of static electricity. Make sure you earth yourself.

Valinote · #7 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 04:17

Steve are you able to boot anything on this computer?

I can boot from the Ultimate Boot CD and run diagnostics (Memtest86+ and Vivard) which show no issues with the RAM or HDD.

-Steve D[/b]

bigpup · #8 Post by **bigpup** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 04:30

Does this computer have a UEFI bios?

Valinote · #9 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 06:15

No, it's a standard MBR Bios.

-Steve D

Burn_IT · #10 Post by **Burn_IT** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 13:20

Just as a test, try Lucid based one like 5.28

Valinote · #11 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 15:45

Ok. I tried Puppy Lucid 5.2.0 and result was the same, without the "DESKTOP FAIL: Black-screen/hangs..." hint of course.

Here's some background on this laptop. I inherited it from my daughter who was complaining of blue screens on her Win 7 os install. I love the speed of linux, so I thought I would wipe the drive and go with some flavor of Puppy. Of course before installing anything to the hard drive I thought I would boot off the live cd so I could do a "test drive" before I commit to one version or the other. But I can't seem to get past the "Loading intrd.gz....ready" message...8-\

-Steve D

sheldonisaac · #12 Post by **sheldonisaac** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 16:12

Valinote wrote:Ok. I tried Puppy Lucid 5.2.0 and result was the same, without the "DESKTOP FAIL: Black-screen/hangs..." hint of course.

Here's some background on this laptop. I inherited it from my daughter who was complaining of blue screens on her Win 7 os install. I love the speed of linux, so I thought I would wipe the drive and go with some flavor of Puppy. Of course before installing anything to the hard drive I thought I would boot off the live cd so I could do a "test drive" before I commit to one version or the other. But I can't seem to get past the "Loading intrd.gz....ready" message...8-\

-Steve D

If you want, connect its hard drive to a different computer, one which does run Linux.
See to it that this drive, which had been in the Dell Studio Laptop computer, is empty.
Make a Linux partition on it of a few GB or more, and set it to be a bootable drive.

Copy into that partition these files from,
for example, a Lucid Puppy:

initrd.gz,sulu_002.sfs,vmlinuz

Then run grub4dosconfig

Install to the mbr of the hard drive.

Any chance that there's something strange about that hard drive?
Might it be of any use to try:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1
Of course, use the correct /dev/??? that applies to the drive you want to zero.

Or, as a test: see whether you can put Linux on a different hard drive in the Dell Studio Laptop.

Sheldon

Valinote · #13 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 18:48

Sheldon, this laptop has a SATA drive. All my other systems are older and have IDEs.

I tried pulling the hard drive out and booting Fatdog with pfix=ram,nox, but still no joy.

I *am* able to boot completely into the Parted Magic OS that comes with the latest Ultimate Boot CD. From that gui I was able to pull up a console terminal and dd is running now. I should also be able to make a linux partition and copy the puppy files as you suggested. Will report back after I give it a go. Thanks!

-Steve D

Valinote · #14 Post by **Valinote** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 21:03

Ok,

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

works fine.

But if I try to write 0's to the whole drive with the built-in erase function,

dc3dd status=noxfer sizeprobe=on of=/dev/sda bs=4096 count=488397168

the system hangs at various percentages of completion. I tried this 4 times with the same result. Bad hard drive maybe? Any diagnostics you recommend? Vivard didn't find anything, and the SMART status says "GOOD" for whatever that's worth.

And why wouldn't pfix=ram work with the hdd pulled out? Can you not run puppy without a hdd?

I am now using Vivard to attempt to write 0's to the whole drive.

-Steve D

sheldonisaac · #15 Post by **sheldonisaac** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 21:23

Valinote wrote:Ok,

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1

works fine.

But if I try to write 0's to the whole drive with the built-in erase function,

dc3dd status=noxfer sizeprobe=on of=/dev/sda bs=4096 count=488397168

the system hangs at various percentages of completion. I tried this 4 times with the same result. Bad hard drive maybe? Any diagnostics you recommend? Vivard didn't find anything, and the SMART status says "GOOD" for whatever that's worth.

-Steve D

Please excuse - I'm not an expert.
Lots of other people are.

Can you make a bootable USB 'drive'?
And put on it the essential files of a Puppy-ish Linux; probably the vmlinuz, initrd.gz, and the distro's main file, eg sulu_002.sfs
Look st http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=90461
There may be other Puppies that are better for your computer?

If your problem computer can boot the Puppy from the USB drive, that's a good start.

ardvark · #16 Post by **ardvark** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 23:24

Hi...

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

Regards...

Galbi · #17 Post by **Galbi** » Wed 17 Sep 2014, 23:34

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 · #18 Post by **Valinote** » Thu 18 Sep 2014, 02:07

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 · #19 Post by **Ted Dog** » Thu 18 Sep 2014, 03:23

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 · #20 Post by **Ted Dog** » Thu 18 Sep 2014, 03:31

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.

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Laptop won't boot puppy! [SOLVED]

Laptop won't boot puppy! [SOLVED]