First Windows Problem Post
Well, it didn’t take me long to get a Windows problem to post. Microsoft almost makes my job too easy. My cousin Frank’s Compaq laptop began having a problem while playing World of Warcraft (He is at level 47 currently). Basically the computer froze, so he had to do an unclean shutdown. When he booted up again, he got just past the Windows XP screen with the progress bar at the bottom before he got a blue screen with jiberish on it and the computer automatically rebooted. He was very concerned when he called me because he had just finished his final project for a web design class and he had no backup. I grabbed my trusty copy of Knoppix 3.6 (K) and drove over to his apartment. I put K in his laptop and tried to boot. No luck. K was hanging while trying to detect the DVD/CD-RW drive. Time to try some boot options. I tried loading the 2.6 kernel, doing the expert config, and something else which I don’t remember (but it didn’t work). I finally used failsafe. w00t! The black X appeared and we were in business. The next step was to configure the network, because failsafe does not automatically get it fully working. Luckily K has a script to get the network online. Now that the network was running we tried to get the Samba server configured. After a couple of failed configs, I threw in the towel on Samba. So I ended up just FTPing it to one of my servers and burning a copy of his site when I got home. He sure was happy and I sure was tired. The moral of the story, no matter what operating system you use — BACKUP!
February 3rd, 2005 at 9:36 pm
I just discovered how to use a USB flash/thumb drive with Knoppix 3.7. Before booting, insert your USB drive, then boot using Knoppix. Knoppix will configure your drive during the boot process. When you get to the desktop you will see an icon which links to your USB drive. Knoppix mounts the drive read only, but that is easily fixed. Right click on it and select ?Actions? > ?Change Read/Write Mode? > click ?Yes?. Now you can rescue your files before the entire Windows OS implodes.
February 5th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
If Knoppix hangs while trying to detect ?/dev/scd0? here is how to fix it. Restart the computer, but this time when you reach the Knoppix ?boot:? prompt type ?knoppix nodma?, then press enter.