Linpus Restore Failed - Black Screen : Resolved

Hi

I am having problems restoring Linpus on a 8Gb ZG5.

The machine originally had Linpus installed. Then someone put XP Pro on it!!!!

I have tried to restore from the Linpus disk.

I tried the USB stick method, it failed.

I tried restoring direct from the CD using a USB to IDE adapter. That got as far as loading the software from the CD then it 'fell over' with an unhelpful error message. I repeated this a few time with the same result. I tried both methods using a copy of the Restore disk, with the same results.

I then 'torrented' another copy of the Restore disk and tried again, again both ways failed on a number of attempts.

My next strategy was to Ghost an image from another working 8Gb ZG5 and restore it to my machine.

The restore seemed to go well; but when I booted, all I got was a black screen with a flashing cursor near the top.

As a last resort I wiped the disk with Partition Magic, then used Ghost to do a direct (via network) disk to disk copy from the working machine.
(I don't recommend this, it took 40+ hours! Ghost only wanted to work at 1Mbit/min!!!!)

Again on boot I got the black screen with a flashing cursor.

If I examine the disk with Partition Magic all seems to be in order.

So what is the problem? I suspect that it may be something to do with the boot loader configuration.

Before I started this process I made a Ghost image of the XP installation. This I have restored without problem, so the hardware looks OK.

The System BIOS is V0.3304.

Any ideas? Any posts on the Forum covering this?


Thanks

BillP

 

Re: Linpus Restore Failed - Black Screen

Got you stumped?

I am sure that in the past I have read elsewhere about a similar problem on another Linux distro.

If I recall correctly the solution was an edit to the boot loader. However I cannot find that info now.

Look as though I will have to put XP back on it!

Thanks for looking

BillP

 

Re: Linpus Restore Failed - Black Screen

Topic moved to Linux System Recovery. Should get you some more exposure to the Linux crowd.

 

Re: Linpus Restore Failed - Black Screen

OPPS! Silly me

My thanks to Swarvey.

BillP

 

Re: Linpus Restore Failed - Black Screen

Still no ideas?

Here is the latest:-

I have tried to install Ubuntu 9.10 but the installation process 'bombs' when the partitioner starts up with the message 'Ubiquity.components.partman failed with exit code 141'

I have deleted all partitions, done fdisk /mbr, and all that I can think of. Still the Ubuntu installation fails with the partitioner error.

So I Ghosted the XP image back, NO PROBLEM!!! It runs fine. :?

So, remembering that this was a Linpus machine originally, what does XP do to the SSD that Linux does not like?

Thanks for your interest.

BillP

 

Re: Linpus Restore Failed - Black Screen

If you're looking at Ubuntu, you might want to try the latest daily build
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/
I've found that with the daily builds, sometimes the installer works, sometimes it doesn't.

 

Hi Guys

Thanks to information from RockDoctor I have resolved my problem.

I have now been able to create a new USB Recovery Drive, using the Recovery CD, that works.

What was different? Simple, I was using a new, good quality USB drive. :!:

Previously I was using a generic 16GB flash drive. This time I used a SanDisk Cruzer 4Gb flash drive.

So it seems that I have been chasing my tail due to a cheap USB memory stick. :lol:

So, the moral of this tale is, Beware of Cheap USB Drives :!:

Thanks for looking at my problem, and a BIG THANKS to RockDoctor.

BillP

 

Bill, I have the same problem you experienced. I even went out and bought a new 4gb SanDisk Cruzer (before reading your post) thinking that a good quality memory stick might just solve the problem. It didn't. No change. I still cannot get a recovery USB made off that CDRom that came with the Aspire One (it's 2 years old). Every time I select the partition of San Disk Cruzer (as indicated on the Aspire screen from installation on the cdrom), I get an error code 39 and to report problem to [email protected], an email address which doesn't even exist anymore.

 

Hi ultrarunner

Sorry to hear of your problems. Are you located in the UK? If so I may be able to help you with a copy of my restore CD.

Regards

Bill