Can't Boot Live CD

jeopardyracing · 09-26-2005, 06:31 PM

I have a new Dell Dimension 5100 which shipped with an SATA hard drive. None of my Linux Live CDs will boot on it - they each give a zillion errors after they try to boot which include the lines "Drive not ready for command." I even tried disabling both hard drives (I added a second one) in the BIOS but the error still occurs. Will I not be able to run Linux on this new Dell?

free_ouyo · 09-27-2005, 11:37 AM

Hello,

What's the Live CD you are using ? Some old version of boot cd don't support sata drives and this may cause some problem.
Also, it's possible the BIOS settings are bad, with some SATA and IDE motherboard, you have the possibility to set BIOS settings with SATA enhanced and others ... (don't remember exactly). This was I reason I had some problem to boot live cd.

A good live cd is the Knoppix, the hardware detection is very good. I use the 'FCCU gnu/linux boot cd', it's a Knoppix 3.9 modified.
--
free_ouyo

jeopardyracing · 09-27-2005, 01:14 PM

I tried both the latest version of Mepis (3.3.1), an older version of Knoppix (3.3) and Knoppix 3.7. I have downloaded Knoppix 3.9 and will burn that ISO and try it...

cuiq · 09-27-2005, 02:49 PM

I think those versions of knoppix automatically default to the 2.4 kernel try typing

knoppix26

At the boot screen this will boot with the 2.6 kernel which has built in support for SATA.

Peace V

free_ouyo · 09-28-2005, 12:35 PM

Did you get better results with Knoppix 3.9 or does the problems continue ?

free_ouyo

jeopardyracing · 09-29-2005, 10:48 AM

When I keyed Knoppix26 it said the default kernel was already 2.6. I also tried the cheatcodes 'failsafe' and 'no acpi' but the problem recurred both times. so it must be that this 5100 has some kind of chipset that the newer kernels I have tried aren't yet supporting. Anyone know of a good guide where I can cross reference distros with my chipset?

AwesomeMachine · 09-30-2005, 02:13 AM

Go into bios

go into IDE setup

take the controller off enhanced

put the controller on legacy

Save

reboot

jeopardyracing · 09-30-2005, 10:23 AM

I looked for that set of options in the BIOS (which is Dell version A01 - I checked for updates but none are posted yet) and it only has a section for

"SATA Operation"

The choices are "Normal" or "Combined" and the description says the combined offers greater compatibility with "older operation systems" while "normal" offers the highest performance. I tried changing this setting to "combined" but the Linux distros still fail.

Emmanuel_uk · 10-12-2005, 07:00 AM

Does this helps to find if your sata controller is supported
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

Have you tried noauto option (if available)
to disable some detections. It might help

AwesomeMachine · 10-13-2005, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by jeopardyracing
I looked for that set of options in the BIOS (which is Dell version A01 - I checked for updates but none are posted yet) and it only has a section for

"SATA Operation"

The choices are "Normal" or "Combined" and the description says the combined offers greater compatibility with "older operation systems" while "normal" offers the highest performance. I tried changing this setting to "combined" but the Linux distros still fail.

I guess you would want to try the combined setting.