HELP: Feather on usb not booting (very basic help)

khanelias · 04-04-2008, 12:48 PM

Hi
I'm completely new to linux but since I have this new 8GB stick, and i use public pc's alot at college i wanted to put feather on this stick.

So i followed all the steps. formatted the stick. extracted feather0.7.4usb to the stick. extracted syslinux-2.11 to C:. (i'm working in vista btw) then i open the command line and that's where i get confused. some walkthroughs tell me to use syslinux F:, others say syslinux.exe F: ... so i tried both. the first gave a message telling me that something was trying to acces my hard drive blabla security. the other (with the .exe) seemed to work. the light on my flash drive flashed a few times and no warnings or nothing. i check the flashdrive but ther's no syslinux.exe on there. but that's how it's supposed to be i guess? (i don't understand why i just can't copy the syslinux.exe normally to the flashdrive, so did that too, but the following problem persisted).

Now here's the real problem. I boot from my USB Hard Drive, and all it gives is a black blank screen and in the top left corner a flashing cursor. And that's where it stops... I have to turn of the computer.

Please someone help i'll be forever grateful. I will even carve you name into my brandnew 8GB flashdrive.

(ok i made that last part up ^^)

thanks

nflenz · 04-04-2008, 01:49 PM

Try this command instead:

Code:

syslinux.exe -m -a -d /boot/syslinux F:

In Windows, .exe is implied, so syslinux and syslinux.exe are the same. I don't know why the output was different, though.

khanelias · 04-04-2008, 05:55 PM

Sorry, but i still get the blank black screen

. I did what you said about the other command. It returned this line:

Code:

Usage: syslinux.exe[-sf] <drive>:

Could you maybe explain what i did with this command? Cuz it didn't really solve my problem. Thanks for the help though!

khanelias · 04-05-2008, 04:42 PM

New development:

I looked at some other mini type linuxes. found out about puppy linux. I burnt the image to a cd and booted it. pretty much worked but couldn't get anything like sound, wireless, mouse, usb flash drive running... the site told me to boot it from cd and then in the setup window there should be an option to install puppy to the usb. well there wasn't

...

So now I have a bootable linux OS at my command. Not that I can do alot with it for the time being

.

Anyway, all help still welcome on how to get my usb flash drive bootable

thanks!

edit:
I tried something. first syslinux.exe f: onto the formatted usb flashdrive and THEN unzipped feather onto the flashdrive. booted up.. at least i got more than a black screen =>

Code:

Intel (R)Boot Agent Copyright blabla Initialising and establishing link PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cables PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent j_ (flashing cursor)

Then the flashing cursor, no action. only option poweroff. Tried it a second time, same failure. Check my cables on a usb flashdrive? i dunno... help?

khanelias · 04-05-2008, 08:21 PM

*bump* said the car