Hello again... can't boot after installing 2.0 from LXF

  • mmmmna
Posted: Thu, 01/31/2008 - 23:51
Howdy again, folks! I was on the mail-list either side of 64S v1.0, but I've never liked mail lists and had to drop 64S for a spell to get a working desktop that could surf. Mandriva 2008 x64 seems to surf ok (posting from there) so I'm adding 64S v2.0 as a third boot option (XP64 is still here too). I've installed 64S v2.0 from the Linux Format DVD from their September 2007 issue. So glad they sell LXF over here! Booting is not happening, though. Here are the details: Installation went rather well, considering I have a Broadcom based wireless NIC (Mandriva is using FWCUTTER and the appropriate Windows .sys file). I'm not too concerned about surfing from the 64S install, but you had me willing to try it (back when I was on the mail-list). I will have to leave that for a bit, since my issue is that I cannot boot the 64S install. 64S is listed in the grub menu (and a tip of the hat that I can see XP and booted Mandriva after 64S was installed - always an iffy moment for me when grub acts like everything is cool ... I lost one install a few years ago due to early grub issues, but that's another story). I selected 64S and the screen went dark, then the screen went dark grey (technically, this is an LCD display - the backlight turned off then back on) but after that, the system sat dead for 3 minutes. A quick snap of the reset switch, and here I am posting the issue. Details: Elitegroup RC410L/800-M motherboard, Celeron D uniprocessor, 1 Gig SDRAM. The motherboard uses ATI chipsets: North Bridge = ATI Radeon Xpress 200, South Bridge = ATI SB450 and the graphics are also onboard: ATI Radeon X300-based 2D/3D. No text is displayed. What can I add to help get this installation to boot?
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Super Grub Boot

  • picothinker
  • 08/22/07
  • Fri, 02/01/2008 - 05:45
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First, congrats on getting Broadcomm wifi working with Ndiswrapper! I never had much success, because there were too many *.sys files to go through. I did not have original install disks for that, and it was apparently used in many different devices. On your boot problem, I would recommend trying Super Grub Disk http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/ There are versions for USB, floppy and CD. It taught me a lot about Grub. It has ugly DOS-looking menus, but it's easy to use arrow-key/ESC/Enter to navigate. There are a few menu trees, that I just have to CtlAltDel to get out of, if I explore the wrong place. On my 64studio I boot to IDE drives, but use SATA for faster I/O on the data. Edit: thinking again, if your monitor is up but you see no video? hit Ctl Alt F1 to see if you get a login prompt. If you do, the system is up, but the X (gui) is not right. If you have ATI chipset for video, this could be causing problems. An easy way to fix is install Envy (I think it's in non-64studio repos, so beware!). Envy will install proprietary Nvidia and ATI drivers, but the downside is that it will easily blow up things later on. A better choice may be to use the flgrx* drivers in the 64studio repos. You may not have a billion triangles per second gaming 3D resolution, but it may work better. Or it may just plain work! Using flgrx* drivers will help ensure that it keeps on going through upgrades.

Ah yes... one more thing

  • mmmmna
  • 01/31/08
  • Fri, 02/01/2008 - 00:13
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PCLinuxOS also suffers the same issue on this box.