Ubuntu LiveCD didn't work when I needed it most

KatanaDV20 · 29 Dec 2007 at 23:39

Hallo

Its only in the past 2 months or so that I crawled out from underneath a rock and woke up to LiveCDs and such. I immediately realized how useful one would be if Windows failed to boot up.

So I downloaded the Ubuntu LiveCD .iso & created the LiveCD.

I tested it several times (setting the PC to boot from CD) and it worked flawlessly.

Today after fitting an additional DVD drive in my PC Windows refused to boot fully. It would boot and then go into sleep mode. No error lights on the Dell tower were lit and there were no error beeps. A chkdsk failed to fix things.However Safe Mode worked so I knew it was not that serious a problem. Both optical drives worked perfectly.

So out came the Ubuntu LiveCD. Popped it in, it started up Ubuntu with the slider animation going...and then the drive stopped reading the CD & the loading animation froze. Nothing happened. I tried about 5 times with no luck. I then went to the windows recovery screen and selected the Last Know Good Configuration option which fixed everything and now Windows works fine. However faith in the LiveCD has been severely dented. In this case I was lucky and things were fixed but I rely on the LiveCD to recover files etc when Windows is well and truly down the drain.
If any of you guys has experienced this and knows the cause or has fixed it...I would really appreciate your advice/input

Thanx

GarethDW · 30 Dec 2007 at 00:36

Hmmm... not sure what is causing the hang-up during boot-up but what you could do is edit the boot parameters instead of just hitting Enter to launch the LiveCD. If you remove the "silent" option then you'd see what the installer was doing when it hangs.

When you've got an idea of what is causing it, you might be able to add another parameter to workaround the problem. For example, I have issues with my USB keyboard & mouse when using some LiveCDs, but there are a couple of parameters I pass to fix it.

KatanaDV20 · 30 Dec 2007 at 08:56

edit the boot parameters instead of just hitting Enter to launch the LiveCD

Thats interesting mate, you mean instead of just seeing the Ubuntu loading animation (the orange slider thingy) you would actually see step-by-step written conformation of what the Ubuntu installer is doing? That would be handy!

Incidentally I should have thought of this before posting but I just ran the Windows Event Viewer and one of the errors was this:

The Creative Service for CDROM Access service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the path specified.

Wouldnt know why something like that would cause Windows to go into sleep mode though!

Thx for replying

likwid · 30 Dec 2007 at 11:19

To come here complaining that Linux failed to help you fix Windows seems a little unfair. Surely the fact that you'd used the Ubuntu live cd previously without problems, coupled with the fact that Windows had suddenly stopped working, might have suggested some hardware problem?

KatanaDV20 · 30 Dec 2007 at 18:52

To come here complaining that Linux failed to help you fix Windows seems a little unfair.

First off this was not a complaint! I came to this part of the OcUk forums to seek help from users who know of Ubuntu.

I will be the first to admit that I know nothing of Linux and am using the LiveCD as an "emergency rescue disk" (ERD) . Your point about a hardware problem is well taken but what confused me was that there were no hardware faults showing:

1. Device Manager showed no exclamation marks.
2. Belarc Advisor & Everest Systems Analysis also showed no faults.
3. All the ABCD status lights on the Dell tower were green & good to go.
4. Both optical drives read other DVDs & CDs correctly with no problems.
5. No error beeps were present on bootup
6. The Ubuntu "Check disk for errors" option found no fault on the LiveCD itself

Far from complaining Im actually very impressed with the LiveCD but because I keep it safetly tucked away to use as an ERD to salvage files when Windows goes south I was just interested to see if others had experienced a similar problem.

GarethDW · 30 Dec 2007 at 19:24

KatanaDV20 said:
Thats interesting mate, you mean instead of just seeing the Ubuntu loading animation (the orange slider thingy) you would actually see step-by-step written conformation of what the Ubuntu installer is doing? That would be handy!

Yep, instead of just seeing the progress bar you get some meaningful information whizzing past the screen.

Windows does a similar thing, by the way, but I've always found the *nix version to be more helpful, as it tells you what it's doing (including some pretty funny messages sometimes) rather than just saying what driver it's loading.

It's pretty much the info you'd get if you did dmesg...

Here's an example that I found on Google: