Re: O/T Computer troubles need ideas

Posted by MarkB_MI on May 11, 2007 at 18:24:05 from (216.234.123.92):

In Reply to: O/T Computer troubles need ideas posted by Jeff Oliver on May 10, 2007 at 19:10:45:

Jeff,

You got a lot of suggestions, but nobody told you how to determine whether you have a software or hardware problem. And that's the first step to troubleshooting a computer problem.

The best way I know to figure out if the hardware on a computer is bad is to see if it will boot up with a totally different operating system. You could do this with a Windows installation CD, but you won't have a usable system after it boots and you could mess things up. A better way is to see if the computer will boot under Knoppix. Knoppix is a "live" Linux CD, meaning that you can boot right off the CD and have a totally usable system if there are no hardware problems.

To get Knoppix, go to knopper.net and download an ISO image from one of the mirrors. The latest English version of Knoppix is:

KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso

Then burn the image onto a CD with whatever CD burner software you have.

To use Knoppix, just stick the CD into the CD boot device and reboot the PC. Knoppix will boot pretty much automatically. If Knoppix boots successfully, you can be pretty sure that your hardware is good.

Knoppix will mount any filesystems (disks) it finds "read only"; meaning it won't write to them. So there is no risk of harm to your system. You can opt to mount a disk read/write and use Knoppic to recover data or fix the boot disk, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.

• Knoppix mirrors

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