5 replies to this topic

[SanDiegan11]

Hi, I have encountered so much problems in trying to get a Linux Live CD or USB stick working for my Vista HP PC, I am glad to find this site. Hope someone can shed lights to my problems.

First I followed the web page "A Free Utility that Creates Bootable USB Drives"
http://www.techsuppo...-usb-drives.htm in making a Bootable Linux USB stick on an Imation 4-GB Swivel Flash Drive (FAT32), but found it not bootable. Even today's [HP a1700n" bios update] gave me the same HP: Released BIOS: 2007-10-09 Version: 5.07. The first Boot Device is still only available for Floppy Group, which is not installed as I don't have one, not available is the Removable Group as mentioned elsewhere for some other models. So I am not sure whether a bootable USB stick is possible for the 3-year old HP Pavilion a1700n PC. So my BIOS boot sequence is set to boot from CD drive first.

Secondly I tried to settle for just a Bootable Linux CD by following instructions from
http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download
and failed to make it bootable. No luck when I tried the Mint flavor either. Both the downloaded iso files ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso and linuxmint-9-gnome-cd-i386.iso should be OK as the winMD5Sum check were successful. CD-Rs were burned using Ashampoo and InfraRecorder. The 11-year old Viewsonic P815 screen initially had horizontal snowing and then turned into green background with horizontal flashing lines. Saw automatic countdown from 7-second, etc and even heard one or two notes of music.

Naturally I question whether the Vista compatible driver for the TSSTcorp TS-H652M drive is compatible to Linux. But I can boot Terabyte's Image for DOS (IFD) Bootable CD and I used it in a restoring job. So I don't understand why the IFD CD is bootable but not the Ubuntu one.

Thirdly, if there is no way to remedy the foregoing two effort may be I could attempt to set the Terabyte's BootIt NG's Booter to have
Removable Disk (F:) as second choice in the booter for the USB stick
DVD RW Drive (D:) third choice in the booter for the CD

Any wits you can share with me will be greatly appreciated.

[LinuxSupahFly]

The .ISO that you download from Ubuntu should, by default, already be bootable. If you plan on burning the .ISO's from a Win32 platform, I suggest using either MagicISO or PowerISO to burn as both will advise you if an image is bootable. I myself have had no problems booting with official .ISOs from Ubuntu, having burned from both a Windows platform and from a Linux one as I currently employ Karmic Koala on one of my machines. Make sure your burning software understands the image is bootable and if it does not, consider switching.

[Wonko the Sane]

Two steps:

• get IMGBURN:
  http://www.imgburn.com/
• burn the image following this:
  http://forum.imgburn...hp?showtopic=61

Wonko

[SanDiegan11]

Hi, LinuxSupahFly and Wonko the Sane,

Thank you both for responding to my inquiry. Sorry for being late in responding as I am also working on other channels.

I noted that Windows and Mac are listed but not Linux in Viewsonic P815's spec, http://www.dll.com.m.....815 Specs.pdf

Google with [viewsonic p815 Linux] as keywords got me 5000+ hits, including some ripoff sites to places asking for $20 or $35 for drivers.

Submitted an email support request to Viewsonic and got a reply:
I understand that your monitor displays horizontal snowing then turns green background. I care about your concern and I am glad you took the time to contact us. To resolve this issue, please follow these (8) troubleshooting steps I listed below: ...

Regarding their #2's "update your video driver," I tried at
http://www.viewsonic...?prod_name=P815
but found "We did not find drivers for P815"

I am wondering whether the current driver for the 11-year old P815 from Vista Windows and settings working Vista are Linux compatible. The P815 works well for Vista and the 8 troubleshooting steps surely were passed for the Vista case. So I wonder whether it ever was successful for Linux.

Now back to you folks suggestions, I got these two iso files directly through
http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download, and
http://www.linuxmint...ition.php?id=52

Page 9 of LinuxMint_9.0.pdf

If you’re running Windows you can use a program like InfraRecorder (also mentioned in the above ubuntu link)...

Note: Make sure to burn the ISO image to disk, and not to write the ISO file to the disk. A very common
mistake, especially for people using Nero, is to actually burn the ISO file on the disk as a data file. The ISO
file is an image of a disk so it needs to be burnt not as a file which will appear on the disk, but as an ISO
image which will be decompressed and whose content will be burnt onto the disc. After burning the CD you
shouldn't see the ISO file within the disc, but rather folders like “casper” or “isolinux”. Most burning
software has a special option for this.

My description of the booting observation:
The 11-year old Viewsonic P815 screen initially had horizontal snowing and then turned into green background with horizontal flashing lines. Saw automatic countdown from 7-second, etc and even heard one or two notes of music.
suggested that the two burned files might be OK, but something else might be amiss.

Hi, I have encountered so much problems in trying to get a Linux Live CD or USB stick working for my Vista HP PC, I am glad to find this site. Hope someone can shed lights to my problems.

First I followed the web page "A Free Utility that Creates Bootable USB Drives"
http://www.techsuppo...-usb-drives.htm in making a Bootable Linux USB stick on an Imation 4-GB Swivel Flash Drive (FAT32), but found it not bootable. Even today's [HP a1700n" bios update] gave me the same HP: Released BIOS: 2007-10-09 Version: 5.07. The first Boot Device is still only available for Floppy Group, which is not installed as I don't have one, not available is the Removable Group as mentioned elsewhere for some other models. So I am not sure whether a bootable USB stick is possible for the 3-year old HP Pavilion a1700n PC. So my BIOS boot sequence is set to boot from CD drive first.

Secondly I tried to settle for just a Bootable Linux CD by following instructions from
http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download
and failed to make it bootable. No luck when I tried the Mint flavor either. Both the downloaded iso files ubuntu-10.04-desktop-i386.iso and linuxmint-9-gnome-cd-i386.iso should be OK as the winMD5Sum check were successful. CD-Rs were burned using Ashampoo and InfraRecorder. The 11-year old Viewsonic P815 screen initially had horizontal snowing and then turned into green background with horizontal flashing lines. Saw automatic countdown from 7-second, etc and even heard one or two notes of music.

Naturally I question whether the Vista compatible driver for the TSSTcorp TS-H652M drive is compatible to Linux. But I can boot Terabyte's Image for DOS (IFD) Bootable CD and I used it in a restoring job. So I don't understand why the IFD CD is bootable but not the Ubuntu one.

Thirdly, if there is no way to remedy the foregoing two effort may be I could attempt to set the Terabyte's BootIt NG's Booter to have
Removable Disk (F:) as second choice in the booter for the USB stick
DVD RW Drive (D:) third choice in the booter for the CD

Any wits you can share with me will be greatly appreciated.

[SanDiegan11]

I installed ImgBurn suggested by Wonko the Sane, but got the same symptoms like from Ashampoo and InfraRecorder.

A second support tech from ViewSonic wrote me:

"... we do not have drivers for Linux operating systems. However, if the unit is working properly in a different operating system then the problem could be pointed to the graphics card of the particular unit.

I would advise you that the monitor is a plug and play device which does not need any drivers for it to work properly. I would also advise you to try and update the graphics card of your computer as it might be the root of your problem."

Then I noted there are 250 hits from http://ubuntuforums....archid=74147665 with keywords ["nvidia geforce 6150 le" ubuntu 10.04 Vista]. Not sure whether they were addressing driver compatible to both Vista and Linux for the same Nvidia card. Suggestions from the some of the above links seem to require you are already in a Linux environment which poses the dilemma of chicken or egg which one comes first. Also I tend to think whatever display driver if provided inside the Live Linux CD must be a Greatest Common Factor type which should not cause the problem of my system."

I guess the culprit of the problem here is from the Hardware components line-up of the HP PC being not Linux compatible:
Phoenix Award BIOS,
Toshiba-Samsung: TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H652M ATA Device,
Nvidia geforce 6150 le

This package works OK for Windows Vista after the initial CD/DVDW replacement. The initial Hitach CD/DVDW could not perform a two-disk DVD image backup within Windows, and convincing the HP to do the replacement was a difficult effort akin to pull teeth from them.

[SanDiegan11]

Following a tip from What's the best choice for a novice Linux user? (http://lounge.window...howtopic=773346) I went to Linux Test (http://www.zegeniest...?firsttime=true) which is "a Q&A for what you want to do w/Linux and how tech savvy you are. ... provide a good start/recommendation(s) based on your answers, with a brief paragraph about the different distro's. "

It found the following "perfect" match(es) for my system: 100% OpenSuSE: 95% Ubuntu (Your computer may be too slow); 95% Linux Mint (Your computer may be too slow); ...

The 5% difference in the "perfect" match made a huge difference for my system. I have successfully made and loaded the three disks mentioned in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSUSE : "openSUSE Download Edition: This is the freely downloadable ISO version, available from the openSUSE downloads page. It is available as a Live-CD version (KDE4 or GNOME) which can be installed on the hard disk, or as a more complete single layer DVD-5."