Can't boot. Old Bios or my bad?

Forum: USB booting
Topic: Can't boot. Old Bios or my bad?
started by: daniel_victoria

Posted by daniel_victoria on Dec. 13 2006,20:13

I followed the procedures from the Wiki for installing DSL on a Pen drive (Cruzer Mini 512Mb), that is:

1) Format pen drive
2) syslinux <drive letter>
3) copy files to pen drive

My computer has a AMIBIOS release 7/12/2001 (I know, it's old) and it has the option USB-FDD for boot devices but, setting the computer to boot from USB-FDD does not work. It says there is no boot device.

So, is this an unsuported BIOS problem or a DSL installation problem?

I was able to run DSL from the pen drive using Qemu. I also tried inverting the installation procedure, copy the files then run syslinux but no changes...

Thanks

Posted by Juanito on Dec. 14 2006,04:53

I would guess this is a BIOS problem - unless you have a USB-HDD option, I would guess you are stuck.

You could create a boot floppy and then use the fromusb boot option.

Posted by daniel_victoria on Dec. 14 2006,11:22

Is there a correct order for the installation procedure, that is, should I copy the files first and then run syslinux, run syslinux and then copy the files or it does not matter?

Posted by Juanito on Dec. 14 2006,12:12

I'm not sure if you are speaking of the boot floppy or the USB boot:

The boot floppy is created from an image file so you don't need to worry about syslinux. If you use the fromusb boot option, your system will boot from the floppy and then load the dsl/knoppix files from your USB stick (see < http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Boot_Floppies). >

All instructions I have seen for creating a bootable USB stick mention syslinux before they mention copying files but I am not sure if this is essential or not - in any case, as per your post above, your BIOS does not support booting from USB-HDD so this is irrelevant, no?

Posted by daniel_victoria on Dec. 14 2006,12:24

It's just that I'll try on another computer that apparently supports USB-HDD boot. Will keep my fingers crossed:)

Posted by daniel_victoria on Dec. 14 2006,12:45

I'm really out of luck. I tried on another computer that had USB-HDD, USB-ZIP, USB-FDD options and none worked. How do I know if the syslinux procedure worked correctly?

Posted by Juanito on Dec. 14 2006,13:07

If syslinux worked correctly, it will write a file named ldlinux.sys in the root directory of your USB stick.

You could try to burn a DSL CD, boot from it and use the right-click menu to make a bootable USB-HDD

Posted by daniel_victoria on Dec. 14 2006,16:54

On a second computer I tried I got it to boot after I explicitly forced the bios to boot from the USP disk (pressing F8). DSL is pretty impressive! Great job.