Deja Boo

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TenderFoot
Posts: 130
Joined: Sun May 03, 2009 2:34 pm

Deja Boo

#1 Post by TenderFoot »

A couple of days ago, as is my wont, I decided to revisit one my lesser used machines, in the belief that when put to bed nearly 2 years ago all was well only to discover several shortcomings - mine and/or the machine!

This is a kinda update on viewtopic.php?f=92&t=41561 which at the time believed to be resolved but, although MX16 had been successfully installed then, thought it could be brought update with my latest snapshot. However, when trying to boot from the usb stick, the dreaded "Verifying DMI pool data......" message was presented. After trying various combinations of o/s, usb stick and burning utilty still couldn't get past that wretched message. Btw, in all circumstances the stick is "recognised" as a ZIPO!

In the meantime, I noticed that a little green light was permanently lit on a Videomate S350 pci board even when the machine is powered off (though the switch on the psu is still on). Also a flash drive is occasionally recognised by an installed o/s. After removing that board and trying again, on the first occassion the word ",,Success" was added to the offending message but then stalled anyway!

This led me to questioning the psu. The aforementioned pci board was probably installed after the o/s installations so perhaps its power need was denying sufficient power to the usb ports even though there was sufficient for the sticks to teasingly glow as did the light on a 2.5in cradled hdd which normally works fine through a single usb cable, not needing the special cable supplied to soak power from an additional usb port. To test this hypothesis, the hdd was connected to an external power supply. All the partitions thereon were immediately recognised by file managers and successfuly transferred about 100Gb of data from it. I could probably even still boot from it this way as it still has a couple of o/s's still (temporarily) on it from its previous life on the same machine - but that's another, possibly connected, story!

It should perhaps be mentioned that the mobo is a Foxconn X361 mtx which I have always found to be a pig in a poke and with a useless manual. The minimal support for the on-board Sis gpu often proved to have limited support amongs linux distros but its fate was sealed when it failed so had to utilise an nVidia 6200LE in another slot and which probably consumes more power - especially as I suspect that, although disabled in bios, the Sis gpu is still consuming power as its heatsink still gets very hot.

The psu is "only" 250w and possibly no longer able to deliver enough power and/or failing anyway, so it does occur to me to purchase a higher powered one but am reluctant to throw good money after bad nor devote disproportionate further time on it and, therefore, may confine it to the great recycling skip in the sky!

I'm posting here in Chat because its mostly musing and perhaps seeking casual guidance but if Admin see fit to move it then that's ok.

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TenderFoot
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Re: Deja Boo

#2 Post by TenderFoot »

Just to update this saga -

A few days ago, after wrestling mentally and physically for so long with this issue, having tried every permutation of possible causes as a process of elimination to isolate the culprit (eg bios, mobo, psu etc) decided that the cheapest oftion would be a replacement mobo compatible with existing cpu and ddr2 via ebay.

Opted for a Pegatron (who?!) at £16. This, of course is completely different chip set, AMD v SIS and different graphics - ATI on board v nVidia pci card (the SIS on board had failed long ago).

Fiddled with all the connecters (sans proper manual) then transferred cpu+heatsin and ddr2 modules then slapped it into case, making all the necessary power connections and inserted n/w card. With trepadation, fired up - and no big bang or even puff of smoke. Monitor sprang into life and straight into boot menu where Win7 is the default.

To my amazement, Win7 booted normally but with no wifi n/w from the TPLink pci card (yet to be resolved). Next WinXP which needed safe mode and required a lot interaction to get chip set drivers but not requiring me to present any proprietary drivers except for graphics yet had maintained the n/w connection!

Next came MX-16. Oh Joy! Not a glitch; it was as if nothing had changed. How does it do that?

Finally PCLos but that just balked after grub.

The (Ami) bios on this board is the strangest implementation I have encountered and could not at this stage find a way to invoke the device boot menu - often F12 or esc. However, with regard to what started this saga, slapped in a live usb to see if it would at least be recognised and to my surprise it actually defaulted to it and booted just fine.

BTW Whilst searching for a mobo I couldn't resist bidding for a Gigabyte complete with Intel cpu, 4Gb ram and hdd which became mine for £22. All it needs now is a case+psu....

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Gordon Cooper
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Re: Deja Boo

#3 Post by Gordon Cooper »

Got one here with an old ASUS board - the Delete Key invokes boot on this.
Backup: Dell9010, MX-19_B2, Win7, 120 SSD, WD 232GIB HD, 4GB RAM
Primary :Homebrew64 bit Intel duo core 2 GB RAM, 120 GB Kingston SSD, Seagate1TB.
MX-18.2 64bit. Also MX17, Kubuntu14.04 & Puppy 6.3.

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JayM
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Re: Deja Boo

#4 Post by JayM »

What I always do to find the BIOS setup's Mystery Key when the boot splash screen doesn't say what it is, is to just start pressing all of the function keys as fast as I can like mad, figuring that one of them is bound to work.
Please read the Forum Rules, How To Ask For Help, How to Break Your System and Don't Break Debian. Always include your full Quick System Info (QSI) with each and every new help request.

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TenderFoot
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Re: Deja Boo

#5 Post by TenderFoot »

Yeh! This one has an extremely convoluted process sometimes involving two or more boots. Pressing Del makes it pause at a yet another post screen with a menu for Bios (Del again), Select boot device or network. Then it boots again...

At least the default is boot from usb if present or the BCD menu appears to select o/s. I'll settle for this status quo!

Restart from an o/s seems to reboot that o/s rather than "normal" boot process - you need to shut down and restart the machine for that!

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TenderFoot
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Re: Deja Boo

#6 Post by TenderFoot »

BTW Whilst searching for a mobo I couldn't resist bidding for a Gigabyte complete with Intel cpu, 4Gb ram and hdd which became mine for £22. All it needs now is a case+psu....
Got a case for the above and put it all together. Seems to work but...

It has Xubuntu pre-installed. It took several attempts to successfully boot but now realise that it takes 5min to do so - I had aborted previous attempts because I thought it had failed! Yet the supplied drive is a wdc wd3000glfs which is a super-duper 10000rpm device. How can Xbuntu take 5min to boot?

The bios identifies it as "slave" yet there isn't - and couldn't be - sharing on a sata bus?

And, bearing in mind where all this started (see OP) it has the same b****y bios as the Foxconn with the same b****y problem - it won't boot from USB! (And is it USB-FDD, USB-ZIP, USB-CDROM or USB-HDD in the boot menu?).

How can I get MX (or indeed any other o/s) on to it? Xubuntu offers no tools - eg gparted - that may enable me to move forward?

EDIT Win usbs do boot (and Puppy nearly does)!

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Old Giza
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Re: Deja Boo

#7 Post by Old Giza »

You could go old school and burn an ISO to CD or DVD and boot from that, or use Plop to boot from USB.

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TenderFoot
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Re: Deja Boo

#8 Post by TenderFoot »

And if it doesn't have an optical drive (which it does)?

But yes, I just came across PloP last night - yet, ironically, it needs to be burned to cd!

DVD would (should!) provide an interim way forward but I'm still determined to understand - and overcome - whatever the common factor is in these conflicts.

Why do Win usbs work but not Linux (though Puppy used to)?

Why, on this "new" rig, does Xubuntu take 5+min to load from a 10000rpm sata3 hdd? Is it compressed or encrypted though doubt they would impact that heavily if at all

Why does the F12 boot menu list both CDROM and the specifically identified CDROM? Could it because it is an all sata system? Daft!

Is a usb stick treated as USB-HDD? Do Unebootin, Rufus et al add a boot record?

Sorry, just rambling aloud as I go slowly mad...

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