A bit of a booting problem

So, in the sense that a picture is worth a thousand words, here is about 7000 pictures in the form of a video describing my problem.



The video shows the successful POST operation of the booting stage, then the failed booting of both of the livecds.

i cant figure out the problem. It wont boot Slax or Backtrack 3. They are both discs i have booted from before.

Any help?

reply to post by shiman


Apparently you also have a problem posting videos.

Use only the video ID, in this case "K_VCivtxA_g", when using the "YoutTube VIDEO" button.



At first sight it looks like it could be a graphics problem, maybe adding a start-up parameter will solve the problem.

I know that I had a similar problem with a virtual machine, and it was solved this way.

reply to post by ArMaP


Im sorry for that link.

I thought it might've been a video problem, but the video card seems to be working fine. The computer itsself becomes unresponsive when the menu freezes. It stops grabbing data from the CD drive, so its not just the video card.

I did look through bios settings, and i set everything to what its supposed to be. I did fiddle around with different combinations of bios video settings, still did nothing.

reply to post by shiman


If what I think is happening, it's when the OS is booting from the CD/DVD and tries to change the graphics to a higher definition mode that things go wrong.

Edit: did you try "ESA mode"?

[edit on 6/8/2010 by ArMaP]

Originally posted by ArMaP
reply to post by shiman

 

If what I think is happening, it's when the OS is booting from the CD/DVD and tries to change the graphics to a higher definition mode that things go wrong.

Edit: did you try "ESA mode"?

[edit on 6/8/2010 by ArMaP]

\

Well, the os doesnt get to the part where it changes the graphics. It freezes at the boot menu.

I will check for ESA mode,

I didnt find ESA, its an AwardBIOS, so where would it be under?

It's in the boot menu that appears for 10 seconds. If you don't change the selected option it will boot the predefined option (the first).

The VESA option (that uses an older graphics standard) is the third option, I think.

Edit: It's VESA, not ESA, sorry for that.

[edit on 6/8/2010 by ArMaP]

reply to post by ArMaP


Oh, the problem is it becomes unresponsive right at the boot menu. As soon as the boot menu, or half of it, loads,it becomes completely unresponsive. so i see the boot menu, or half of the boot menu, and i cant do anything except stare at it, or turn off the computer.

Update.

Tried Slax, Backtrack 3, Kmobiletools, and Ubuntu 8.10 liveCDs, still no success.

Slax freezes with the boot screen half loaded.

Backtrack 3 freezes right after bootscreen

Kmobiletools freezes right after bootscreen

Ubuntu 8.10 freezes after bootscreen, with text on the screen, and a blinking cursor.

reply to post by ArMaP


oh, vesa.

i just tried it. did the same thing. froze right after the boot screen.

What's the model of your computer?

Sometimes specific models have specific things that Linux doesn't like and that have to be disabled for it to work.

I tried Slax on a virtual machine with no problems.

reply to post by ArMaP


Well, i used linux on this motherboard for a while, then i blew a processor. i replaced the processor and now it does this

the motherboard is a k7vta3 v3.1

its a custom built computer.

I dont think the problem is with the OS, or the way its booting either. I have an install of Ubuntu on the harddrive, and i used it for a while untill when i blew the processor, when i got it so the whole boot menu loads, i tried booting in recovery mode and it froze as soon as the boot menu went away.

Well, you can try the text mode and the memory test mode, if you haven't done that already.

I'm running out of ideas.

I did try that, same result.

It might be the RAM. I ws able to run one memory test and it reported an error in to different areas of my 3 ram cards, but i wasnt able to isolate which card, every time i try different combinations of the three ram cards, it freezes.



[edit on 7-8-2010 by shiman]

Can you try with one memory module at a time?

I tried one at a time. Each time the same thing happened. I think there might be an issue with the motherboard reading and writing to certain parts of the ram, based upon the fact that there was an error during a memtest. I couldnt understand what the error was saying except that there was one 9 mb chunk that was defective and a .1 mb chunk that was defective.

What i gathered from the memtest and the freezing, also a visual inspection of the motherboard, the motherboard is defective in some way and does not read or write properly in parts of the ram. I have replaced it with a different one that i have.

But if somebody thinks it may be a different problem, or they may have a solution, im all ears.

Could be the power supply has gone flaky. Check the powers supply and motherboard for bulging or leaking capacitors.

If you see any that part needs replacing.

reply to post by shiman


Have you tried resting your BIOS to the default settings? You should be able to load either default, fail safe (I think) and optimum settings... Try default or the fail safe... Then you will have to remember to re order the boot order again to boot off CD/DVD and see how you go.

Also that message about flash is interesting... Have you left a flash drive in any of the USB's? If you wan't to try booting off a USB flash drive that should be possible even on an old bios, the boot option is usually USB zip or something - you have to google your specific BIOS version.

Sometimes I have problems booting from certain LG DVD burners.
Try booting from a different drive that is not LG.