Baslinux mailing list

[baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org]

> I rebooted the laptop to test it, and it said," Please insert disk and press
> enter."
>
> I thought there might be something wrong with the boot sector, so I tried to
> install Windows 95 without Internet Exploder (there's about 15 floppies),
> and whenever it tries to scan the hard disk for errors and such after
> formatting, it fails. I tried this with 2.1gb hard drive and the same thing
> happened.

Have you checked CMOS settings to see if the hard drive is recognized and 
set to boot?  Linux can find drives that the BIOS has not been told are 
there.  A 200MHz computer may not automatically detect the hard drives.

You can download a freedos boot floppy, then test your drives by making a 
small DOS primary partition (use DOS fdisk and format), boot with DOS 
floppy, sys c:, see if it boots to hard drive.  Much quicker than Windows.
Does Win95 startup disk have fdisk, format and sys?

I have run into lots of hard drives that won't boot.  We fixed one 
recently by typing fdisk /mbr from DOS - partition table was messed up. 
Others simply have wornout boot sectors.

If you have a CD_ROM drive you can try installing basiclinux to CD.
Someone posted the proper image.  (Where and who?).  Not all older laptops 
will boot from CD-ROM but you can run Smart Boot Manager to fix that. 
(One of my computers won't even work with SBM.)  Some will boot from 
CD-ROM but not syslinux (used by DSL).  They all like LILO.

Sindi

> Using loadlin with Damn Small Linux hangs after it states the processor
> speed.
>
> Is this a hardware error?
>
> -Jeow

Please don't include so much extraneous stuff in your postings.