Tag Archives: knoppix

HP Pavilion Boot Loop Problem

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Yesterday I ran into a devil of a time with a HP Pavilion slimline workstation at work. This machine was beyond it’s warranty with HP, so no help from them. I had a machine that presented these symptoms:

  • Computer powers up normally.
  • All BIOS-level diagnostics pass.
  • No error codes or beep codes whatsoever.
  • Once the HP BIOS Splash screen fades, the computer should boot into Windows. In this case, Windows 7. It does not. The computer reboots into the HP BIOS Splash screen. Ad infinitum.
  • You can enter BIOS Setup, you can also access the Boot Menu to select other boot sources, however the F11 key to start System Restore is unresponsive.
  • All first-tier efforts to clear the error were taken. BIOS reset to factory conditions, as well as holding down the power button to clear the power supply controller. None of these resolved the issue.

I then plugged in a copy of Knoppix that I downloaded and installed on a USB memory stick. I could have also burned the ISO file to a DVD and used that as well, but the USB was handy. When I use Knoppix this way, I like to enter this “Knoppix Startup Cheatcode” into the prompt right after it boots: “knoppix 2” (without quotes, of course) and this starts the Knoppix system in  the INIT 2 run level, which is single-mode text only interface. I don’t need X-Windows, and in this case, that just gets in the way.

Once at the CLI for Knoppix, I figured the boot flag, the boot manager, or the MBR was shot for the primary partition on the hard drive in the machine. Diagnostics indicated that the primary hard drive was fine, so it wasn’t a physical failure in the HD. I knew that the first (and only) hard drive in systems like these were most likely /dev/sda, you could search the “dmesg” log if you have doubt on where in the /dev the primary hard drive is. Knoppix has the “fdisk” command, so that was my next stop. I knew that this particular HP machine had a Windows Recovery partition stuffed in it, so when I started “fdisk” I displayed the partition map and there were three partitions: /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and /dev/sda4. I looked at the sizes and figured that the biggest one was the damaged partition, the middle one was probably for swap or scratch or something, and the last one seemed sized properly for the recovery partition. Honestly it was a guess. I turned the bootable flag on for /dev/sda4 and then off for /dev/sda1, then wrote the partition map to disk and then issued the command “shutdown -r now” to reboot out of Knoppix. Technically you could have just unplugged the machine, but I’m a big fan of orderly shutdowns even when the consequences are irrelevant – it’s a good habit to have.

The machine booted to the HP BIOS Splash screen, and then Windows Recovery started. Once the recovery partition got going I noticed a cutesy HP menu appeared offering me a selection of options. I started out with the simplest option which was something like “Microsoft Windows Boot Recovery” and it ran for maybe a second and then offered to reboot. I went for the reboot and that fixed the issue. Windows started but instead of a regular startup it went to the recovery menu, which I found fine since that was where I was going to go anyways by pounding the F8 button like a madman. I selected “Safe Mode With Networking” and then plugged in my USB memory stick containing TRON and got TRON working on the system.

Once TRON was done, I rebooted and let chkdsk naturally freak out about the structure of the NTFS partition in /dev/sda1. Chkdsk did what it had to do, and the system booted normally. I then set it for redeployment.

I figure if anyone else has this issue, this blog post might be helpful. If it helped you out, and you’re willing, maybe dropping a wee tip in Bitcoin or Dogecoin would definitely be appreciated.

Shuffle thy mortal coil

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Everything is done, for the Apple Digital Lifestyle project for our soon-to-retire management person. Getting to this point was a challenge only in terms of getting the data off of the old computer. The old machine was a Dell Dimension desktop loaded with Windows XP. I got the machine running and everything was fine, as far as Windows XP can be fine and I inserted my Knoppix DVD into the disk drive and rebooted. Then began the hurdles, the system was configured to boot first to the HD, not to the DVD, so I changed that and rebooted, the disk wouldn’t read and the system booted to the HD anyways, up comes Windows XP. Turns out, this computer is so old that it doesn’t have DVD, just a plain CD-ROM drive that I errantly mistook for a DVD drive. So I swapped out the Knoppix DVD and traded it for a Knoppix CD, rebooted and finally was up and running in Knoppix. I mounted the volume where the user files lived and used the tar utility to copy them over the network to my iMac on my desk. Once that was done I switched Knoppix out for DBAN, a popular hard drive erasing utility and booted into that, set it to chew away using DoD short wipe and proceeded to unpack the tar file I had copied over. I had unpacked the users data, trimmed out the meaningless Windows junk and ended up with about 800MB of user data in the end, mostly music and pictures and a few documents peppered in. I made a new ‘tar’ file and then copied that over to the new iMac using my handy-dandy USB file transmission cable. I had utterly blanked on the fact that both my iMac and the new iMac had fancy FireWire 800 capability, and only now that I reflect upon it do I feel rather silly in forgetting FireWire.

Once the data was over, I moved all the documents where they needed to be and then I thought about how I would manage the music and pictures. First was the pictures, I opened iPhoto ’09 (which came with the iMac!) and clicked on File, Import, pointed it to the directory that held the mishmash of user data and in about 45 seconds (I couldn’t help but time it) all the user pictures were now in iPhoto. I did the same thing with iTunes for the music and that took a whole 30 seconds. I then threw all the rescued remains in the trash (because they were now in iPhoto and iTunes) and then rescued bookmarks, that took a whole 10 seconds and into Safari it went. Cleaned everything up, installed the ‘Free’ HP All-in-one, and that took 2 minutes to unpack and 30 seconds to set up, I had a test print a minute later. Packed it all up, walked it to the manager’s office and he’s all set to enjoy.

What will he enjoy? His big thing is email and using iChat Video Chat. That’s the biggest selling point I think for this entire adventure. He can see his daughter and her budding family, full audio/video Mac goodness for as long as he likes to do so. I suggested that he could even set up a link in the morning and have a virtual “magic mirror” run all day long so they could spend time close to their loved ones without the expense or trouble of traveling.

After this entire adventure it struck me that I effectively ran an entire micro-sized Apple Store from inside my head. I had a Genius Bar (my office), I was the Genius (don’t have a fancy apple shirt, tho) and I got the user interested, sold, migrated, and trained – just like in an Apple Store. If Apple ever were to establish a store in Kalamazoo I would definitely moonlight there, without a doubt. The last time I did enter an Apple Store was with my Father in Syracuse a few months ago, the salespeople approached and I was busy pointing out a 21″ iMac to my Dad and as the sales guy approached he heard me actually running through his script. He chuckled and smiled and stood behind me. That’s why Apple succeeds, because they impress people like me and we become evangelists. Walking around, free Apple advertising and when someone comes up and asks, we show them all the wonderful fun they could have and then they go and buy into the dream as well, the cycle continues.