LiveKDE won't boot on my laptop, hanging on bios boot screen

u2ix · June 8, 2010, 9:31pm

Hello everybody,

I have some trouble booting the current KDE Live Cd (11.2) on my Laptop. I tried USB and CD both.
The laptop hangs on the bios bootscreen and I cant select any further option like a boot device.
No problem I have with an Ubuntu CD.

What could be the problem?

Thanks you

DenverD · June 8, 2010, 9:56pm

u2ix wrote:
> What could be the problem?

could be a faulty install disk…did you

back up your data before you began
get your install image from http://software.opensuse.org/112/en ?
(if not, then where?)
check the md5sum of the downloaded iso?
do this http://tinyurl.com/yajm2aq before install attempt?

if you answered “no” (or “don’t know”) to any of those then do step
one and see the following cites before you start over:
http://en.opensuse.org/Download_Help
http://tinyurl.com/yhf65pv
http://tinyurl.com/ycly3eg

DenverD · June 8, 2010, 9:57pm

u2ix wrote:
> Hello everybody,

sorry, i forgot to say -=welcome=- new forum member!

u2ix · June 8, 2010, 10:33pm

Thanks for your fast reply.

Don’t need backup its only my laptop.

Yes

Yes, it was ok.

Yes thats the problem I dont get even to this menu. It stops on the bios screen, and I can’t select a boot device.

knurpht · June 8, 2010, 10:42pm

Take a close look at the BIOS settings, without the USB device connected, no CD in drive. The BIOS may block booting from other devices.

u2ix · June 8, 2010, 10:44pm

As I wrote before there is no problem to boot an ubuntu. I checked the settings.

DenverD · June 8, 2010, 10:53pm

u2ix wrote:
> I dont get even to this menu. It stops on the
> bios screen, and I can’t select a boot device.

does it report no boot image found?

have you set the BIOS to boot from the CD?

if yes, then tell me how it goes:

-you see the BIOS notice flash by and then what? do you see the CD
reader’s LED flash or turn on or whatever it normally does? do you
hear the disk mechanism turning the disk?

that is, is your machine trying to read the CD?

what happens on the screen? does it just go completely black in (like)
one second…or does it take 30 seconds (one minute) to go black and
still?

does it report something like “boot image not found”?

how much RAM does your machine have?
what is the brand/model and CPU make and speed…

is Ubuntu currently installed on the machine? if so, boot to it then
put the install media in the drive and look inside it, what do you see
(one file or a number of folders)?

u2ix · June 9, 2010, 9:55pm

Yes its setup to boot from cd rom.
Whats happen directly after pressing the startbutton.
Screen goes on I see the “hp” logo and on the bottom the message “Press the ESC key for Startup Menu”. It remains on this screen.
If I press ESC nothing happens.

What I notice is that the fan goes fast and also the cd rom. It looks like he remains on this state endless.

Its a hp compaq 6735b laptop.
It has a AMD Turion X2 ZM-84 and with 2GB of Ram.

Yes its currently running with Ubuntu.
I see some files and one folder on the cd root. The folder called boot. In the root folder I can find the GPL Licence and a syslinux.cfg, a file called openSUSE-kde-11.2-livecd-kde-read-only.x86_64-2.8.0 and 2 others.

Thanks for your support.

u2ix · July 1, 2010, 7:18pm

I could get the installer running over PXE, but I still have some problems on booting which I have to look closer.
Thanks for your help.

DenverD · July 1, 2010, 7:53pm

sorry! i see i missed your responses and no one else tried to follow
my logic…i will now try to:

u2ix wrote:
> DenverD;2174311 Wrote:
>> have you set the BIOS to boot from the CD?
>> if yes, then tell me how it goes:
>> -you see the BIOS notice flash by and then what? do you see the CD
>> reader’s LED flash or turn on or whatever it normally does? do you
>> hear the disk mechanism turning the disk?
>> that is, is your machine trying to read the CD?
>> what happens on the screen? does it just go completely black in (like)
>> one second…or does it take 30 seconds (one minute) to go black and
>> still?
>> does it report something like “boot image not found”?
>>
> Yes its setup to boot from cd rom.
> Whats happen directly after pressing the startbutton.
> Screen goes on I see the “hp” logo and on the bottom the message “Press
> the ESC key for Startup Menu”. It remains on this screen.
> If I press ESC nothing happens.
>
> What I notice is that the fan goes fast and also the cd rom. It looks
> like he remains on this state endless.

to me that sounds like your CD/DVD reader is having problems reading
the disk…which is NOT so unusual…take the disk to another machine
and see if it is read there…if it is, select the media test, if
you get any errors throw that disk away and follow my “start over”
instructions above…

-make sure you have no fingerprints on the install disk
-if you are a smoker maybe your laser lens needs to be cleaned
-otherwise, the makers use pretty cheap cd reader hardware…read
around and you will find the fail all too soon…

> DenverD;2174311 Wrote:
>> how much RAM does your machine have?
>> what is the brand/model and CPU make and speed…
>>
> Its a hp compaq 6735b laptop.
> It has a AMD Turion X2 ZM-84 and with 2GB of Ram.

if you ever get a disk you can read you may want to use the install
disk’s ram test…at least over night for full check…

> DenverD;2174311 Wrote:
>> is Ubuntu currently installed on the machine? if so, boot to it then
>> put the install media in the drive and look inside it, what do you see
>> (one file or a number of folders)?
>>
> Yes its currently running with Ubuntu.
> I see some files and one folder on the cd root. The folder called boot.
> In the root folder I can find the GPL Licence and a syslinux.cfg, a file
> called openSUSE-kde-11.2-livecd-kde-read-only.x86_64-2.8.0 and 2
> others.

ok, that sounds like it is ok…and, NOW i’m really confused because
you are saying that your machine reads the cd ok when running Ubuntu
but not when being controlled by the BIOS (that time when you see the
HP logo and it is spinning the CD at a high rate…

perhaps you need to check if you have the latest BIOS for that machine
or if there is a BIOS set up that needs to be changed (hello! i do not
know what that might be but i do know if you wanna just start changing
things to try you need to keep GOOD note of how it was set when Ubuntu
worked…by the way, will it boot a Ubuntu install disk??

very strange…

> Thanks for your support.

wish i could be more helpful…

DenverD · July 1, 2010, 7:55pm

u2ix wrote:
> I could get the installer running over PXE, but I still have some
> problems on booting which I have to look closer.
> Thanks for your help.

look closely at hardware and bios… (thousands and thousands of folks
have successfully installed from install disks which check out as
absolutely perfect by the onboard test…DO that test as your next
action…even if on some other machine…