HP OmniBook

Forum: Laptops
Topic: HP OmniBook
started by: Dj Brimstone

Posted by Dj Brimstone on Mar. 29 2005,05:25

I'm sure you get quite a few of these posts, but my Windows 95 OmniBook won't boot from my cd rom drive. I've tried using a boot floppy, using rawrite and all that, but it then says that it can't find the Knoppix filesystem, and drops down to a very limited shell...which sucks...Now, I have the ISO on my hard drive. I have it on a cd. What can I do? The thing is, my cd rom drive eventually IS recognized, just not when the bios starts up. I've also tried using a boot manager to do it, but it acts like my bios, because Windows is what loads my Cd rom drive, so that's why neither my bios, nor my boot manager can help me out with it. I've tried looking this up without asking, but i've been so confused by what i've seen. Please help me out, I'm somewhat of a noob, here. Also, there is no USB drive option here. I don't have a usb drive.

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 29 2005,17:29

1. Boot up Windows 95
2. Clear out 50MB of free disk space on C:\ drive
3. Insert DSL CD-R disk.
4. Copy \knoppix\knoppix over to C:\knoppix\ directory ("knoppix" dir & filename must be lowercase letters).
5. Reboot with boot floppy.

Posted by Waterns on Mar. 29 2005,17:34

Noob helping out a noob.

I had a similar problem. To solve it I bought a 2.5" to 3.5" converter and then stuck the laptop hard drive into a desktop. I then booted up my desktop and had it boot from the CD after which DSL loaded. Then it was a simple process to go under the system menu and select hard drive install. Couple of minutes later it rebooted and I took the drive out and put it into the laptop. Kazam! it boots up to DSL!

Note: You might want to want to disconnect any other hdds in the desktop. Also remember to mount the laptop drive when DSL boots up.

Posted by Dj Brimstone on Mar. 29 2005,23:33

Okay, I copied the Knoppix File and directory successfully. It appeared to boot up fine, but then, it just came up a Grayish screen with a Black X (cursor thingy?)...How do I fix this? It appears like it was going to load the Desktop, but all there is is this Grayish Screen, with a Black cursor, i think.

Posted by cbagger01 on Mar. 29 2005,23:46

Try "Right-clicking" anywhere on the grey desktop.

As in, push the Right mouse button.

Posted by Dj Brimstone on Mar. 29 2005,23:49

Well, my mouse won't move...I'll try using another mouse, and see what that does...

Posted by Dj Brimstone on Mar. 30 2005,00:01

Nah, my mouse won't work. It really doesn't look like the desktop should be that way...Could it have something to do with my cd? I just copied the iso to a cd, so that might be the problem? Or should I extract the rest of the ISO's to the C:\ drive?

Posted by jfath on Mar. 30 2005,01:59

Just finished installing DSL on my HP Omnibook 800ct

1) I also used a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and installed on another machine.

2) The X server included with DSL doesn't work well with the Omnibook's NeoMagic graphic chip or the pop-out mouse. XFree86 works great with both and runs on my 32MB machine without problems. There's an XFree86 extension available for download and some helpful configuration info on the forums found by searching for NeoMagic.

Good luck.

Posted by Dj Brimstone on Mar. 30 2005,02:06

Well, i think it's somethin to do with how I burned it. Because I accidently had a cd in the Drive that didn't have the iso on it, and it did the same thing as when i had the cd in that did.

Posted by Dj Brimstone on April 01 2005,22:13

Ok...well, it wasn't the ISO. I burned it to the cd correctly...still a gray screen with little black criss crosses...I tried perhaps copying the files from the iso to my c drive...nothing...help! What am I doing wrong? It goes through the little Linux command thing...with the little penguin? Loads all the stuff, autodetects, an configures my files...appears to work fine. Then, when the desktop SHOULD come up, there's just that gray screen....

Posted by cbagger01 on April 02 2005,04:24

Depending on the display resolution, the entire desktop will not appear.

If you are using 4bit (16 color) mode, you will see no desktop icons and no wallpaper just a grey screen.

But it still possible to use some programs by Right-Clicking on the grey area and choose from the menu.

Many programs will refuse to run in 4bit mode but others do like links and mc for example.