Kinkinink,

Don't give up on Linux just because you burned a regular CD instead of an ISO.

Take a break from this problem.

Relax, Watch some TV or something.

Get a good night's rest.

And then tomorrow check the MD5 checksum on the disk at:

www.fastsum.com

Then burn a Knoppix .iso boot CD.

Reset the BIOS boot order

and try again.

Thorn

A friend of mine had a similar issue. Please put your Knoppix CD in a Windows machine and take a look at it with Windows Explorer and see what the file list is. If all it shows is one ISO file your CD is not compiled correctly, and that is your no booting issue. If it shows a list of files like autorun autorun.bat and autorun.inf, 2 directories boot and Knoppix, and maybe an HTML and icon file you should be good to go unless you got a bad burn. If don't see these it will not boot in any way shape or form. When you put it in a running Windoze box it should autoload a welcome screen and that could also tell you if your burn was successful. Good Luck.

I think you will find that the users of LinuxQuestions.org in general are quite nice and willing to help with anything, even answer the simplest questions that have been answered many times, as they did with me, and I thank them for that, and I hope you will too.

It is simply frustrating to hear someone have such trouble, which perhaps explains the one user - it was only one - who became upset.

That said, the reason many people DO switch to Linux is because of the community ("users") who will always do whatever they can to help, as has been proven here (this is the second page of the thread already) as well as elsewhere.

When you do switch you will find it great!

i know that and thank you everyone who did try to help me... i became upset as i couldnt figure out what i was doing wrong... i saw more than one file on the cd that i burned... and i did everything everyone suggested... i even sat through another four hour download of knoppix to figure out if maybe i got it from a bad source... it still wouldnt work... and when that person became very rude... i snapped... i became very upset with the whole situation... well i decided that instead of knoppix i would download debian sarge... so far the dl has gone without hitch and as we speak i am burning the iso files to the cd... hopefully this will work this time... if not then i dont know what to do... again... thank you to everyone else who did try to help...

here goes nothing!

IT WORKED... it FREAKING WORKED!!!!! well then... now im happy... well actually now i have to figure out how to partition the damn hd without erasing the entire hd... which debian sarge seems to want to do... hmmm well then... im not quite sure what i need to do know... oh that and it doesnt see my networking ability... other than that... now i can play around i guess... figure it all out... thanks again all... if ya'll can help with my most current problems it would be appreciated... if not... dont insult me just because you cant figure it out...

About the partitioning matter: if you want to make sure you don't screw up anything, boot XP and with PartitionMagic (or something similar), create your new partitions for Debian (at least 3, one of them should be the future swap partition, recommended to be twice the size of your RAM, but 400-500MB should be enough). You can create them even as NTFS partitions. Next, when you boot off the Debian CD, just point it to the newly created partitions and let it do the job, they will be formatted as ext3/swap without any problems.

You still haven't said if you checked the CD under windows....

What is the file name when you click on the the CD under my computer in windows ??

If it doesn't end with .ISO then you did not burn it correctly and thats why it won't boot !!

Burning a bootable iso is different from burning a regular CD.

Rob

Registered Linux User #342652

Man, Kink, I know how you feel. I'm guessing I had an even worse experience trying to get linux to work than you did. It took me nearly 3 weeks to get any linux to work. First I had to figure out how to burn an ISO cd with mac, which took an amazingly long time. Then, I had to burn dozens of ISOs to find one that would actually boot up on my computer. Then I spent even longer trying to figure out how to install w/o erasing my HD. Throughout that process I was constantly posting new threads for my mundane errors. Even after I found a working distro I still had many problems. Sometimes I had the inclination to get mad at the forum for not responding with what I needed, but just keep in mind, they know more about linux than you do and they are just trying to help.

Unfortunately, I don't have any advice for you. Switching to linux is a bitch and there's nothing you can do but plow forward.

You still haven't said if you checked the CD under windows....

Don't you get it, he's has no intent on doing anything anyone says just goes off and does whatever. Perhaps he is doing but the outcome is a secret? lol.

Actually he did say that he checked it...

Debian is a *great* distro for learning about linux as well as for building your own custom linux system without any pain, dependencies, or even compiling from source (although you can and you might).

Basically all you have to know is the easiest quickest way to install an app is by typing at the console:

(if you see a $ instead of a #, type su, press enter, type your password, press enter.)
# apt-get install appName

If you wish, you can do apt-get install synaptic, which lets you choose packages with a graphical interface. I think KPackage is similar.

Also, there are many things that come up while installing Debian or its packages, that need you to "configure" things. Very often the default settings are correct, just press Enter. (Do read it though...)

Debian is really wonderful. When I tried it I did a minimal install and then installed other things myself, including X, the graphical window system.

If you want to get installed right into a graphical desktop, with all your hardware already configured, and with various configuration tools, Libranet is good, and it is (was?) 100% compatible with Debian's software packages, and can be thought of as simply an easier installer.

well here for everyone who is asking me if i did the iso burn... yes i did... and i told yall that i did... btw im a she not a he... and i got it to work... but my next problem was about partitioning without deleting all my windows stuff... soooooo then i downloaded mandrake 10.1 and the set up was a breaze and it helped me with the partitioning and everything... there were somethings that i didnt know what to do about... so i left it alone for the moment... (mainly the internet thing) my newest question is my family has a windows wireless network... how can i connect to the network so i can use the internet on my laptop on linux... my computer is a gateway m350 with a intel pentium 4 processor... how can i connect to the internet on mandrake....

Mandrake is also quite a good distro, it also has a sizeable software repository, not as big as debian's IIRC, and IMHO its package manager in general isn't as good as debian's apt-get. You can keep Mandrake, we just hear about more problems with dependencies & other stuff than with an apt-get based distro. If you go for Debian, what you need is to run QTPartEd, PartitionMagic or similar, to shrink your Windows partition, and make space for a Linux partition. There are also distros that run from a Windows drive (ZipSlack, AmigoLinux) but the two mentioned are hard to use... So stick with Mandrake.

You didn't say how you connect to the Internet. If it's PPP (dial-up) just run your PPP setup utility, not sure where it is in mandrake. If it is via something on the local network, e.g. a router, a proxy on another computer, etc., then you first need to setup your network.

There should have been a network configuration thing in the Mandrake setup, if it didn't work, you need to run it again. If you use a router or modem on the network, usually you can choose DHCP, if not, use your own IP and then type the router/modem as the default gateway. If you use a proxy on another computer, you can set up network like a regular LAN, and then in all apps you need to use Internet it, you tell it the proxy server's IP.

Post back...

ok i said that i run a wireless set up... there is an existing wireless network in my house run off of microsoft wireless networking... aka what i just said in the post right above yours... and im sticking with mandrake... its worked for me so far... i just need to know how to get the linux system to recognize my card...... i ran the internet set up wizard when i installed mandrake... but it wont recognize my internal wireless card... i just need to know... (not in techno speak PLEASE) how to get it to recognize my card... then i can connect to the internet again... right?


well let me rephrase this... i know which of the things i need to choose... but it wont recognize my card... why not?