Beaten

[laura_seabrook]

Bugger, everything I do (in trying to fix the media PC), just doesn't work.. I tried creating a bootable USB drive when the CD-ROM didn't work. I've tried swapping in IDE drives but they're not recognised properly. I have a bad headache. I've phoned Kevin (finally) and really, without him here it doesn't help. I'm living it until they get back (whenever).,

Comments

Damn Small Linux/Knoppix on that thumbdrive?

[capybyra.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin

May explain part of the puzzle.

Damn Small-

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Those are a possible tool set.

Re: Damn Small Linux/Knoppix on that thumbdrive?

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

For that matter, just about any fullsized Live CD will fit on most USB sticks these days...any one less than 700 meg.

The mount utils of Knoppix derived distros is why.

[capybyra.livejournal.com]

I've had Knoppix based distros mount odd drives both optical and magnetic that nothing else even "saw" as a drive.

Re: Damn Small Linux/Knoppix on that thumbdrive?

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Will read this very carefully. My ideal is a dual boot with Ubuntu and Win, but I'll take what I get. This is the PC hooked up to my TV and normally I run a front end for Myth TV to watch stuff recorded on a server.

Re: Damn Small Linux/Knoppix on that thumbdrive?

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Well I gave installing WIN to a USB stick a couple of shots but neither worked properly (I suspect there were extra things not included in the instructions). So, now I'm trying UNetbootin with Ubuntu 9.10 (which I'd already downloaded an ISO of.

Getting closer, maybe.

[radargrrl.livejournal.com]

Describe the system you're having problems with in detail. What do you want to accomplish with it? Got your data saved? What hardware works and what doesn't, especially what you're able to boot from...HD, CD, floppy, USB...

What other systems do you have available to you? I'm assuming there's at least one.

I'll do what I can to help you from here.

The setup

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

OK. I'm trying to fix the media pc which is located in my lounge room. Normally it's attached to the LAN and is dual boot (Win XP / Ubuntu). However, it also uses a motherboard that only initially recognises thing on the IDE bus - it doesn't recognise SATA. When it was installed and working this was fine, because the drivers kicked in and the big SATA data disk was readable. The IDE drive was smallish so Linux was run via a GRUB partition on it but actually located on the SATA drive.

In addition to that, I have my Study PC which is also a dual boot (same OSs), my uni laptop (Win XP), Kevin's PC (Win XP) and the Mythbuntu PC which acts as a server for MythTV (and which it is best NOT TO TOUCH while Kevin is away).

I replaced the dead/corrupt IDE drive with a fresh IDE bought from the markets and it's been formatted and has a WIN95 (!) command.com. But right now it's not reading the SADA CD-ROM nor any of the IDE CD-ROMs I've tried plugging into the bus. It does read USB (the mouse and keyboard are wireless and work) and that's what I've been working with.

I still need a Win install on the PC because there are programs I run that are only in Win, although I want to get Linux back as well. When the partition with WIN XP died I could still boot to Ubuntu (because GRUB was on a different partition), but it couldn't read anything in the Win partition.

I'm going to read
http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb/
http://www.pctipsbox.com/installing-windows-xp-using-a-usb-flash-drive/ and
http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8 before I do anything.