eeepc 701-4g won't boot, bios or ssd?
Hi,
I have an eeepc 701 4gb surf. I use native Xandros and sometimes an installed eeebuntu on USB. The last time I used it I was in Xandros on SSD uploading with ftp and got the warning the drive was full, so I deleted some things in /usr I'd mis-saved there. Not sure if this caused the problem. Next day, booting Xandros just produced a black screen. Doing an F9 restore caused the message Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernal.' and a flashing cursor, but then it stayed like that. Trying to boot the previously working eeebuntu on usb (choosing it after pressing esc. on start up), produced the message 'starting up' but then nothing. Starting eeebuntu in recovery mode produced a line of code, the last of which was he last of which was 0.336623] ACPI: Checking for initramfs for custom DSDT' and a cursor after it, but then nothing. I went to a windows computer and made a new live usb of eeebuntu, but trying to boot it produced a unetbootin screen and flashing cursor but then nothing. (previously the same thing would boot). I can still get a blue bios screen by pressing F2. Boot booster is off and os installation marked as finished. I tried the 'battery out and on button for 30 seconds routine' and 'toothpick in the cmos hole' tricks. I also opened up the RAM, made sure I was properly grounded, reseated the ram and touched a screwdriver to the little cmos plates which are like triangles. So now I'm stuck. Might it be the bios or ssd? If a solution was to run only installed usb's I'd be quite happy, but changing the boot order in bios doesn't do anything. I don't quite understand. Can it be the bios if it won't boot an os that was previously working? Surely flashing it wouldn't make any difference, though I'll try if the instructions are clear enough. If it's the SSD, why won't it boot a live usb? When doing so, I assumed the SSD wasn't accessed at all, or is that wrong? Thanks for any ideas. |
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you can try installing fresh usb with unetbootin Quote:
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Yep. It booted before, used it loads of times, so the os on the usb and ssd stopped booting at the same moment.
In /usr, I only deleted files I recognised as mine eg. university essays etc. that I'd missaved there. It's possible I mis-deleted something, I don't know. I'm using cybercafes while the eee is down, they won't let me do a live boot. |
OK, I'm still working out the best I can. I got as far as realising I can burn a system rescue image on usb and try that, which I've just done and am off to try now.
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I own a 701SD. Sounds like you covered all the bases as far as cmos reset, etc....
It definitely is a mystery why a live pendrive that booted before won't now. It should still boot even with a dead SSD drive. Thats my understanding anyhows. I would get away from trying the Ubuntus. But that is just me. I would try making a Live Puppeee Celeron Kernel Live Usb. Puppeee seems to boot up on any EEEPC. I run AntiX 8.5 on my Asus EEEP 701SD and Asus EEEPC 900. Got tired of trying to upkeep Xandros Repositories as they fell by the wayside. What gets me is that you can access bios boot order (Esc key). Can you also go directly into bios and reset it back to default settings. F9 restore not working makes it sound like internal SSD is borked. Thats where Xandros puts the recovery partition. Still should not effect USB boot though. While is system rescue. See if internal SSD shows that it is full still even though you deleted some stuff. Improper shutdowns on SSD drives like the cheap ones in Asus 701 Phison drives cause excessive writes to said drives which fills them back up again to full status. I have seen this with SD external Flash, Pendrive Flash, and SSD Flash which kills the boot process. I usually used Gparted like in Puppeee on a flash drive to do a check on full drive which would usually fix the drive again. Hard to say what is going on with you from my neck of the woods. If Bios works. The pendrive should boot (unless it is corrupted also or one of those pendrives that don't like to boot) Recovery Xandros Isos in case you want/need them http://sourceforge.net/projects/eeecommunity/files/ Good Luck with it and Happy Trais, Rok |
Thank you.
Hi,
I did try a puppy linux, as well as Damned small linux, and both on another usb, and no joy. The cybercafe won't let me try the live usb. I am getting somewhere though. I made a system recovery cd on usb, couldn't boot, but did run memtest and it said it was ok. I posted a question on the forum over there. Also I found out about ultimate boot cd, and will be trying that later. Advice I'm getting elsewhere is to use this recovery to wipe the sdd and then try a live boot. It sounds drastic... but it's on a non-functioning computer I'll be trying this I suppose. I will keep the thread posted. http://www.sysresccd.org/forums/view...hp?f=14&t=3302 http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.p...731033#p731033 If I get this sorted, it's going to make one hell of a wiki post somewhere! |
UPDATE
Yes, I worked out that there isn't supposed to be an IDE slave detected in the BIOS. I kept playing with UBDC last night, and worked on the 'hard disk (and sdd?) tools. MHDD This worked, and picked up the drive 'Siliconmotion SM223AC' which I presume is my ssd. It did some kind of scan, showing a large grey block of ... whatever it scanned, all ,10ms. It all looked OK (to the untrained eye). TESTDISK Analyise = Disk 81 4001Mb/3815MB - CHS 48625563 1 - P Linux 0 1 1 299 25463 [system] 2 - P Linux 3000 1 *** *** [user] 3 - P Fat32 LBA 484 01 ****** [BIOS] 4 - P EFI (Fat - 12/16/32) ********** No partition is bootable (I'm using stars to indicate various numbers I didn't record) ---- My next steps: 1 - get ubcd version 503 for gparted, and try and repair disk problems there. 2 - try to restore the mbr with testdisk 3 - boot and nuke the ssd and try the live eeebuntu again 4 - flash bios 5 - brick... but it won't come to that. The tests say I'm OK. I'm gonna get through this. |
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If wiping the drive with Dariks boot and Nuke, Do another chkdisk in gparted before reinstall for safety and good measure. Edit: Don't know if chkdisk will even work after darik boot and nuke because drive will be zeroed out and so no files to fix. OOPS. |
UPDATE
I downloaded ubcd 503, and got gparted to work. It's in the 'parted magic' suite, which will only run when I run it from an option, safe boot > no acpi, which is strange as acpi is coming up again. It brought up sda1 and I let it check and repair. I made the sector bootable. But there was no difference when trying to boot from it. From the same suitue of programs, I used a file manager, and could access the entire directory structure of sda1. Then I used testdisk. This is where I went wrong. The first drive it listed is now marked as bootable. I went to another option to 'write a new copy of the MBR code to first sector'. It did so. Now when I try to boot from sda1, it shows 1234F: with a cursor, and pressing enter repeats the message. Yipee, I lost my MBR! Then I had a sudden thought. Now I can access sda1, why not move the boot and grub menu to ubcd-usb, unplug everything and try to boot eeebuntu-usb alone; this would have the same effect as nuking the ssd as there would be no boot info anywhere to confuse it. I tried and it would only let me move some folders, which I did. Then I renamed /boot (on sda1) to /NOTboot. Then I unplugged everything except eeebuntu-usb, tried to boot from it, same as before, a unetbootin menu that keeps booting to itself. So... I've probably lost native Xandros as I messed up the MBR. The upside is, that little 'parted magic' suitue is a mini-operating system. I have a pdf reader and image viewer and can type and save to usb with leafpad, and that's going to save me a load of money in cybercafes as I'm using the eee for studying courses I'm taking at the moment. Right now, I'm getting Knoppix from a torrent to see if that works. The main goal at this point is to put the new Xandros iso (which I have) or eeebuntu on the ssd, no idea what to do as I still can't boot a live usb and, as far as I understand, nuking the drive will make no difference. |
Still watching to see how you fare. I'm off for a 2 day motorcycle trip.
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FYI linux does not use the boot flag.
FWIW the disk has a GPT format and not a standard MBR. Make sure any tools you use are the latest and support GPT. If you have already wiped the disk then it does not matter. |
Not wiped yet, but am trying to get the courage for a bios update (and knowledge).
Enjoy the bike trip! |
I updated the BIOS. I put a FAT16 formatted 2gb drive in with bios 1302 renamed as 701.rom. It found it, said it was erasing, then 'the BIOS' update is finished. Please press the power button to shut down the system.
I started it up again, pressed F2 for the BIOS. The new version is shown, with the ssd detected, os set to finished, boot priority set to removable media as the first, ssd as second, so I tried to boot eeebuntu on usb again... but it was the same, booting repeatedly into a unetbootin menu with the options default and help. I booted eeebuntu again, got the same menu but chose help. There was a screen of code as far as: 0.329721] ACPI Core revision 20080926 0.337021] ACPI: Checking initramfs for custom DIST which is the same as before the BIOS update. However, UBCD still boots. I went to 'super grub disc' and pressed c for a command line to try and repair the mbr on sda1. At the command line, I typed: find /boot/grub/stage1 and got the output: (fd0) I input: root (fd0) and it output: 'filesystem is fat, using whole disk' So... back where I started. |
Try this. With the eeeubuntu pendrive inserted. UBCD pendrive pulled.
On the eeebuntu grub screen. just type in Quote:
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That is why when you type Quote:
You are the only person I have seen so far on the net that can't boot a pendrive of Linux. But can boot a pendrive made with UBCD. It;s a Wonderment. Internal Drive status has no bearing on how bios and a linux bootable pendrive inter act as far as I know. I've booted and ran Puppy CDs on a computer with no internal Hardrive as well as other Linux Cds. Yesterday I made a pendrive of Puppeee 4.4 Beta Testing (Celeron Version). Works real well on my 900. I have a frugal install made on Pendrive with persistence with Java,Flash,devx (version of build-essentials for puppy linux), Firefox 3.6.8 with flash, plus a ton of other apps that come with Puppeee distro. Leaving you with download link (bottom one with puppeee4.4-beta1-cel..> 04-Sep-2010 17:05 130M is for a Celeron Asus like your 701) http://puppeee.com/files/puppeee4.4-beta1/ Install instructions. They work fine for me. http://puppeee.com/web/download/ where the .sfs files are at for java and firefox and opera for Puppeee http://puppeee.com/files/sfs/ How to install a sfs file in Puppeee Quote:
How do dual boot Puppy with Xandros installed (or any Linux distro ) inside internal SSD Quote:
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That is it from me for today. Have some catching up with business after my trip. Happy Trails, Rok Big Edit: Just saw your thread at EeeUser Forum. You say there Quote:
Something is terribly wrong with the way you are making your eeebuntu pendrive if parted magic boots but eeebuntu won't. |
Hi,
Nice to have you back. Parted magic is within UBCD; it doesn't boot independently. I get the usual UBCD menu, choose parted magic, then choose 'safe boot, no acpi' and it works. Yes, it's a mini linux, kind of. But nothing else boots. Of course, I tried Knoppix live usb with a noacpi option, but that didn't work. I'll try the idea with the grub menu on eeebuntu when I get home. I'm thinking, considering everything I've tried, that some kind of information on the ssd is confusing the boot process, so just nuking ssd could be best. If it didn't work, I'd still have parted magic, and be done with it. |
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