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Boot from external disk problem
I have a Latitude D400 laptop running XP Pro with SP3. D/dock with CD RW-DVD-R is attached. My intention is to install Fedora in a dual boot configuration. To do this I must, of course, partition the disk. So I downloaded PartitionLogic v 0.69, a well regarded partition utility which includes its own boot up module. The download and unzip went fine; burn to CD fine too. Reset the boot order in BIOS to use the CD as boot disk and attempted to boot up from there. No success. I'm getting three error messages: (549) no such disk CD0; (287) mounting root filesystem failed; (76) initialization failed. This is very puzzling as the disk not only shows all files when examined, but the software header info shows on screen and and the graphic loading bar does also: I have no doubt the files are on the disk properly and are being read. The system just won't run. I'm beat. Any ideas out there about problems generally encountered when attempting to boot up from external source? Or am I perhaps overlooking something obvious? Many thanks in advance. GCW
ieee488
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July 10th, 2009 08:00
Try your PartitionLogic CD on another PC and see if you can boot into it.
glennD400
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July 10th, 2009 20:00
That is an excellent suggestion. As my other machine is a Mac, I'll have to try a friend's. In the meantime, I'm going to get another partition utility to see if that works.
I see you have already done a Windows/Linux dual boot on a D400. Would you care to share any impressions? Thanks. GCW
ieee488
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July 11th, 2009 09:00
I am partial to Ubuntu, because it is one of the more popular Linux distros. Getting the included Wifi card on the D400 to work required tweaking.That may be fixed in the newer Ubuntu distro. I also have my AT&T mobile broadband card working.
You don't have to use a partition utility. Most of the distros have the partitioning tool built in though by default most will grab as much of the hard drive as it can. I prefer 50-50.
glennD400
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July 11th, 2009 21:00
Thanks for your comments. I'll be looking out for the WiFi problem.
I'm happy to report my problem has been solved: I found GParted at SourceForge and it worked like a charm. Who knows about these things?
One reason for my ignorance in all this is that I'm actually a Mac person (photography and graphics). But I needed to do some web spidering and since the only available apps were PC based, I got this D400 on ebay. For the $130 it cost it is one elegant little machine. I'm really looking forward to getting up and running with Linux and using it as a command line internet research device.
Best wishes to you.
GCW