Booting from liveDVD, OS hangs on desktop

Did you MD5 check your ISO file that you downloaded?
see http://help.ubuntu.com/community/VerifyIsoHowto or http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/LQ_ISO/Checking_the_md5sum_in_Windows

Did you also verify the brned disk was ok on the initial boot screen of the DVD?

Did you burn at the slowest speed your system would allow you to. This can also help greatly.

Thanks

need info about your system configuration ? (RAM,processor etc.)
and the live cd does't eject when u r using it...

Why is CPU and RAM important, its not a complaint of speed. The OS simply doesnt load off the live dvd.

You may also want to run the memtest on the live cd also, its accessible on the first screen the disk boots to.

It's a simple question and one that makes a lot of possible issues easy to discount as the probable cause. For example if the machine has 100MHz Cpu and 64Mb Ram then we could point you towards one set of answers that would be ridiculous for a 2.6GHz Cpu with 8Gb of ram. My main machine has 1.8GHz and 2Gb ram, which is great, but my hard-drives' speed, age and size count against me - still works well though :) I really should repair the drives Windows wrecked but i have too much fun in here, lol.

Memtest is a good answer but takes soooo long. I tend to try making a new Cd, it's easier and faster. Contra-intuitively the cheapest 'write once' cd's are much better for this than the more expensive dvd's which are better for data. Cd's tend to burn slower and more precisely. I tend to buy a pack of 10 cheap cd's at the supermarket for less than the price of a lump of cheese. Sometimes i find it was some other issue which leaves me with Cd's to give away (introducing other people to Ubuntu) or use away from my main machine. Here's a guide to have a quick read-through, see if there's something that might help ...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

It might also be worth trying another distro and see how far you get with that. A small light-on-resources one, from a different family of linux's could help us understand what's going wrong - and hopefully to fix whatever it is that's the problem with the Ubuntu one. I would try Wolvix Hunter for this although Wolvix Cub is even smaller ...
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

The ISOs will all need testing as you could burn a million CDs with a bad ISO and I garuntee that every one will not boot because thesource is corrupted. MD5 testing is critical to a smooth install of any downloaded OS. Using torrents to get the ISO file can help to the the torrent protocol using a lot of error checking but its still quick and easy to verify with a check

Burnin slowly will also help as some system configurations have trouble booting from a high speed burn so this can easily be alleviated

Burning a Cd is quite fast. A 2nd wrong one would be a good indication the iso file might need downloading again. Using a dvd instead of a cd has often caused problems. Fastest and most likely answer is "make a cd", skimming through the help guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
might turn up something different worth trying that none of us will have noticed by ignoring the guide and making assumptions about what might or might not have been tried. Speed, or rather slowness, is a critical factor and dvd's burn a lot faster than cd's.

A memtest can take ages and still might not help. Md5sum checking is fairly quick but takes a while to work out how-to, worth figuring out because it's useful later with all sorts of stuff.

Cpu speed and Ram size would be helpful to know too
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thamks for the replies so far however........
The CD was purchased in a linux identity starter magazine. The menu gives me the option to check the disc integrity and it passes the test. Actually there are 2 CD's. One for 64 bit install, the other for 32 bit. I tried both CD's and got the exact same result as described above. ( my gut says this is a boot parameter issue, however with Linux commands I am an idiot and havent a clue). ANYWAYS to SAJANAGR's question:Asrock 939DualSata2 motherboard / A643500+Venice / BFG7800GT(PCIe) /Samsung HD502I Spinpoint /2*512AmpoDDR400 1:1 2.5-3-3-8 1T / AudigyPlatinum with breakout box / EnermaxNoisetaker600

Your Help is greatly appreciated!

Here is what I just posted:
Thanks for the replies so far however........
The CD was purchased in a linux identity starter magazine. The menu gives me the option to check the disc integrity and it passes the test. Actually there are 2 CD's. One for 64 bit install, the other for 32 bit. I tried both CD's and got the exact same result as described above. ( my gut says this is a boot parameter issue, however with Linux commands I am an idiot and havent a clue). ANYWAYS to SAJANAGR's question:Asrock 939DualSata2 motherboard / A643500+Venice / BFG7800GT(PCIe) /Samsung HD502I Spinpoint /2*512AmpoDDR400 1:1 2.5-3-3-8 1T / AudigyPlatinum with breakout box / EnermaxNoisetaker600

Thank You!

-----Original Message-----
From: <email address hidden> [mailto:<email address hidden>] On Behalf Of sajanagr
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 3:25 AM
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: [Question #67991]: Booting from liveDVD, OS hangs on desktop

Your question #67991 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/67991

sajanagr requested for more information:
need info about your system configuration ? (RAM,processor etc.)
and the live cd does't eject when u r using it...

--
To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
this email or enter your reply at the following page:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/67991

You received this question notification because you are a direct
subscriber of the question.
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 8.5.287 / Virus Database: 270.12.0/2068 - Release Date: 04/19/09 20:04:00

1Gb of Ram is good. Kinda suggests the Cpu is quite healthy too ;)

32bit version is probably better for the better repositories, especially as you'll probably want Wine at the start at least. 64bit can get a bit techie trying to get the repos together.

I think you're right about the boot parameters. Does the magazine help there at all?
Good luck and happy hunting from
Tom :)

Theres no help from the magazine as to boot parameters...BTW I'm using a 23" Viewsonic monitor. Isn't there a Linux boot parameter to manually set basic video resolutions ? The CD menu says to hit TAB for command line boot parameters so I can access certain parameters while loading a LiveDVD. I'm just not sure what to try nor am I finding any references in the forum help.

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/i386/boot-parms.html

Hmmm, i'm not making much sense of that last link :(
I found this?
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/installation-guide/i386/boot-troubleshooting.html

and a quote from halfway down

"
If your screen begins to show a weird picture while the kernel boots, eg. pure white, pure black or colored pixel garbage, your system may contain a problematic video card which does not switch to the framebuffer mode properly. Then you can use the boot parameter fb=false video=vga16:off to disable the framebuffer console. Only a reduced set of languages will be available during the installation due to limited console features. See the section called “Boot Parameters” for details.
System Freeze During the PCMCIA Configuration Phase

Some laptop models produced by Dell are known to crash when PCMCIA device detection tries to access some hardware addresses. Other laptops may display similar problems. If you experience such a problem and you don't need PCMCIA support during the installation, you can disable PCMCIA using the hw-detect/start_pcmcia=false boot parameter. You can then configure PCMCIA after the installation is completed and exclude the resource range causing the problems.
"

hope there's something good in here somewhere!
Regards from
Tom :)

There is no issue with repos for 64bit apps, you will find nearly ALL repos have 64bit and 32bit. The only SINGLE issue I have had with 64bit in the last few releases is JAVA. "64bit is a bit techie" feels more like an emotional expression rather than fact. Adobe have even created a 64bit flash plugin for linux.

If you have >3Gb RAM then use 64 bit provided your CPU is 64bit. If not you will need the 32Bit server kernel which has PAE by default and will allow you to reference more RAM.

Anyway...on with troubleshooting.

If you modify the boot with boot options you may get better results. Check out: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

your hardware may need acpi, apic or dma disabling until you get installed and mit may even need to be disabled in your system for it to run

Little word of warning. CREATIVE Soundcards suck in Linux, creative have trouble supporting Windows. You may find you have to compile ALSA to get it working but there are a lot of guides as these cards are so common but have a lot of issues (at least in recent releases). Who knows it may be better now but I personally boycott Creative due to their poor treatment of customers.

Well that last bit of advice and checking out the /BootOptions help link
gave me the info I needed for a good boot: Here's what i did with boot
parameters:

vga=834
acpi=off
apm=off
noapic
irqpoll

I tried several of these alone and then combinations of 2...I saw some
improvement in the boot process however i didnt get a good working LiveDVD
boot until I used all of the above parameters. Thank you everyone for your
help, I'm actually sending this message through Ubuntu right now :).

In hindsight I believe this Asrock MB(939DualSata2) has some pretty uncommon
characteristics, the most obvious is that it has both AGP and PCI-E Slots
and can actually run them both at the same time thanks to the one of a kind
ULI chipset (1695?)

Well anywhooch thanks again for the help...I'll be setting up a dual boot
system as soon as my new gigabyte ma-790x-ud4p and phenomII 720 BE show up
from Egghead! I last tried a linux livedvd in 2006 and couldn't get online
through it....this version however got me immediately connected through the
firefox browser...also setting up evolution for email was a snap.

Take it easy

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 5:08 PM, actionparsnip <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Your question #67991 on xorg in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+question/67991
>
> actionparsnip requested for more information:
> There is no issue with repos for 64bit apps, you will find nearly ALL
> repos have 64bit and 32bit. The only SINGLE issue I have had with 64bit
> in the last few releases is JAVA. "64bit is a bit techie" feels more
> like an emotional expression rather than fact. Adobe have even created a
> 64bit flash plugin for linux.
>
> If you have >3Gb RAM then use 64 bit provided your CPU is 64bit. If not
> you will need the 32Bit server kernel which has PAE by default and will
> allow you to reference more RAM.
>
> Anyway...on with troubleshooting.
>
> If you modify the boot with boot options you may get better results.
> Check out: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions
>
> your hardware may need acpi, apic or dma disabling until you get
> installed and mit may even need to be disabled in your system for it to
> run
>
> Little word of warning. CREATIVE Soundcards suck in Linux, creative have
> trouble supporting Windows. You may find you have to compile ALSA to get
> it working but there are a lot of guides as these cards are so common
> but have a lot of issues (at least in recent releases). Who knows it may
> be better now but I personally boycott Creative due to their poor
> treatment of customers.
>
> --
> To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
> this email or enter your reply at the following page:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+question/67991
>
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.

Brilliant, nicely done :))
Congrats & welcome to Ubuntu this time round :)
Thanks for posting the answer back here
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Kick ass dude. This is caused by companys using proprietary hardware that the installer doesnt like. A classic example of this is ACER who have weird power management hardware that causes all manner of hell. Glad its working now man. Take it easy