mint iso woes – 303 days old

[Tuffies Son]

So, my last Linux thread/post was about getting my pc to run mint (lisa) from a flashdrive. I had added a second hd to my rig, thinking that since my flashdrive install worked, but wasn't as reliable as I thought it should be, I'd burn an iso and try a dual boot set-up.

I got both the kde and gnome DLs, and thought I'd mess with booting from disk first, so I'd see which one I wanted to try to put on my hd. My problem is that try as I might, my iso burns were just coasters. I think it said "checking disk integrity" or some such, after trying to burn the iso, but it always failed half or 3/4 way through the check. When I tried to use the ones that got closest to getting through the check, the boot sequence would only get just so far into booting, then freeze up.

I pretty much expected that, as none of the disks actually made it all the way through. Now I'm trying to sort out why it acts this way. My first thought about it was that there's something wrong with my dvd burner. It seems to burn pix and text ok, but has never burned a successful iso file. I'm not sure what/how to check to see if there's something about the way I'm DLing the file (through FF download manager), or if my burner is somehow unable to burn that kind of file? I am trying to burn it as an image, but thought that was what I was supposed to do.

Then I wondered if there is something lost by DLing via download manager? Is there something common or obvious that I could be doing wrong? I did try burning at several different speeds too, but that seemed to make no difference.

[Bad Haircut]

What burning program ya using?

Right sized disks for the job? I think Mint requires DVD not CD-R

When you've "burned the ISO to disk" what is on the disk? Put disk in and have a look at it in Windows Explorer. What is there?

[Tuffies Son]

I have a round stack of new dvd-r disks (memorex) 16x 4.7GB 120min. When you say "look" at it in windows explorer, do you mean "open" it, like when it auto launches and doze asks which program I want to use to open it, or do you mean to hit cancel and go to the dvd player directly through xp-win exp?

Oh, forgot to say burning proggy is image burn.

[Tuffies Son]

OK, sorted how I should look at it, and have the following...

Folders, .disk, boot, casper, efi, install, isolinux, preseed, and the doc md5sum

that's everything listed.

[Bad Haircut]

Yeah just stick the disk in and make sure that you have actually burned the image to disk and not literally burned the downloaded ISO file to disk. Windows Explorer should tell you when you click on the drive , you'll either see the ISO file you downloaded there or not.

But if it auto runs and you see things like Mint mentioned then you've burnt the ISO like you should.

Also check the ISO size match up. Check the website for file size and then check what you have in front of you.

[Tuffies Son]

The disk properties say that it is 1,066,518,528 bytes and lists the file system as CDFS...with explore showing me the things I listed in my last post.

[Bad Haircut]

64 bit Cinnamon is 801MB, MATE 885MB, KDE 1.2GB (or something)

Right click on each of your ISO files and hit properties and see if they match.

[Tuffies Son]

I had kde with a name associated with it, but I can't remember what it was. I had Mint 12 gnome (lisa) and it was around a gig, but as I'm not loaded with space, I've since deleted them. I figured that if I were to burn another try at mint, that I would probably need a newer release, since it's been awhile since I DLed them. It seems odd to me that it didn't pass the integrity test (or whatever they called it) but it seems to at first try to boot, and all the folders are listed looking in windows explorer. It might have even been a md5sum check...I just can't remember as it was only on the screen for a few seconds. Do they still sell pre-burned copies of live DVDs for post-beta distros?

[Bad Haircut]

It's not unheard of to get a corrupt download or two, get a partial boot out of 'em and then nowt. As for new releases, old one should be fine provided it's not corrupt. If you're paying money then they'll sell you the finished article and not a beta or RC.

[ZemaTalon]

Do the MD5SUM's match up? Check to make sure your iso's checksums are the same as what Mint lists for them.

[Tuffies Son]

I think they failed Zema. I suppose that I could have gotten some corrupt stuff during the DL process as this is a slow pc and it does take awhile to DL a gig or so. Since my mint 12 DLs are gone now, maybe I should pick one of the new DL offerings and try again. I looked them over on the linux main page today, but I'm not even sure which one would suit me best...I'm green as grass with it. Does anything currently being offered with extended support look like something a newb would get on well with? Thanks for the input btw...

[ZemaTalon]

Their new Mint 13 XFCE seems pretty polished, and would probably run best on an older machine. I'm not sure if it would be any harder for a newb then KDE or the new Gnome forks, to me it feels more comfortable to work with, and it's been quite stable (I'm currently using Mint 12 XFCE on my main machine). It's very configurable, so you can get it set up exactly as you want it. But KDE is quite nice, with lots of effects. What I did was install the KDE edition, then install the XFCE desktop into it. That way I have a choice of either one. But I mostly stay in XFCE. You could do as well with the others - Cinnamon or Mate, with XFCE added (or the other way around)

[Tuffies Son]

Thanks Zema, that XFCE sounds like the ticket. I'll try another DL as soon as I have time and maybe just a clean DL will fix my problem...would be nice. If all this was just due to errant code or something like that, it would restore a little of my confidence in burning things properly. Thanks Again

[Tuffies Son]

I decided to give it a try now...just about enough time. XFCE is a .8g DL and takes about 45 minutes on my rig...no errant code please.

[Bad Haircut]

ImgBurn is pretty good at guiding you through and pointing out errors and failures when they occur, just jot down whatever it reports if you get another glitch TS. The fact that the disk auto ran and showed linuxy stuff suggests it burnt fine but maybe a corrupt download.

[Tuffies Son]

Oh I really thought this was going to work, but...
The disk burn went well, so it seemed, came back after and verified the burn...said congrats...success, but when I went to boot...
-ISOLINUX 4.04 20110711 ETCD copyright (c) 1994-2011 H Peter Anvin et al

EDD: Error 3200 reading sector 414723

NO DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found!

Boot:_ (blinking)

No joy...just freezes at boot? I don't think that the linux gods want me to be able to play.

[Bad Haircut]

http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/9...ld-hd-new.html


Quickly scan that and get to his last reply regarding driver filters. Seems a possibility.


You aren't going to trust the solution so you'll have to ask Grogan if he knows how best to proceed.

[Tuffies Son]

Thanks BH...that filter biz is certainly new news to me, but it does have some similarities to my issues. I was hoping that there might have been some command that I could type in to text that would make it boot anyway. I also thought about taking the boot disk to a different pc to see if it would boot that system, but I only have the one dvd drive. Mr. G, could you help with the best way to proceed? I'm a bit stumped by this new type of problem.

[Grogan]

It likely won't be the upper or lower filter driver registry values in Windows. Any skullbuggery there, would result in your optical drive not working correctly. I mean, you wouldn't get it off the ground. It wouldn't pretend to write your ISO and do it wrong. More likely with that problem your optical drive wouldn't show up at all and be listed with an error condition in Device Manager.

1) Corrupted/incomplete downloaded ISO
2) Bad DVD Media
3) Bad burn (I find DVDs more likely to appear to burn correctly, yet have files that can't be read. I don't think DVD burning has as good of error detection as CD burning)
4) Bad DVD drive

That's simply all there is to it. It's one or more of those problems. The errors you are getting while trying to boot, are because the required files are not being read from the DVD for whatever reason (one of those reasons)

Check the md5sum of the downloaded ISO (if you haven't already) and maybe first try using a different brand and/or type of DVD disk. (e.g. DVD+R or DVD-R)

Burning at a slower speed can help too in some cases.

[Fingerle]

Every time I've had problems with an ISO not getting burned correctly it was due to speed.

So as Gro said, double check the md5sum, then set the slowest speed you can.
(Slowest my current setup allows for is 8x) Never fails as long as I remember to set it for that.

[Bad Haircut]

It's worth bearing in mind the previous burning software that was installed just prior to ImgBurn. As far as I remember prior to asking for burning software recommendations he had actually tried a couple out and from memory I don't recall ever having heard of them. Have absolutely no idea if or what they've tampered with / left behind on uninstall. So it's not inconceivable corruption might have occurred and having read around a bit more that fix cured a couple of similar issues that didn't necessarily have the usual symptoms.

How many coasters and how many downloaded ISOs you racked up so far, TS?

[Tuffies Son]

I've tried 2 mint 12 variations of gnome--lisa and another girl's name. I've tried Mate and another KDE, and now maya. I did find that my last two previous DLs of mint 12 from March and April ARE still in my DLs folder. Maya is the only one that I haven't tried to burn more than once, but it's also the only one under a gig and the only one that the check came back as a success on. All together now, I bet I've burned 12 disks or more.

Perhaps most telling of all is that I've had Mate and Lisa on flashdrive installs that both worked (though a bit of a pita) but sometimes would freeze on boot and I'd have to reboot. Those I felt uncomfortable with because the reading suggests that they can be problematic (the flashdrive installs), so I totally scrapped those and used the flashdrives for different things. DVD burns don't seem to work on iso files and I'll bet Mr. G is right with his suggested causes...so,

1) If I always got corrupted or incomplete DLs of the ISOs then the flash installs wouldn't have worked either.
2)If it was a bad stack of disks it wouldn't burn backup pictures or text files either.
3) I don't think I'd have a dozen or more bad burns, but 100% success with flashdrive installs from the same DLs.
4) Though my DVD burner does do some things (especially playback) just fine, it fails on every attempt to burn a large image regardless of mirror choice or burn speed (I even tried one at 1x) I now strongly suspect that the burner is not all it should be. It is an old burner from an even older pc that somebody gave me. I bet that if I got a new and decent burner, that my problems would disappear. I don't know what fails inside them, but all signs seem to point to that as the culprit. I wish I had a friend around here that would let me remove and swap DVD burners with me, just long enough to verify that the problem doesn't happen on a known modern and good burner, but I have no techie friends around here at all. It looks like trying to buy a pre-burned distro or saving my pennies to get a new burner make the most sense. I don't want to go through the flashdrive install again, so I guess I can't mess with linux just yet...bummer.

Thanks for all the help guys...I'm now pretty sure it's the burner at fault.

[Grogan]

Most programs don't add shit there... stuff like Nero does. It's completely unnecessary, a program needs only to send the required ATAPI/SCSI commands to the device for writing.

Imgburn certainly does not.

I very much doubt he would get that far with corrupted filter drivers but I guess the probability is not zero. Uninstall any software that interacts with the optical drive and check those registry values.

How to Use the Registry Editor Correctly - Deleting Registry Values (contains this very example)

Alternatively, there's a "Microsoft Fix-It" for that problem now which would clear those registry values for you.

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/cd...problems/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314060

My money is on a bad drive.

[Tuffies Son]

I only tried one other burning proggy and I feel that I got all traces of it out of the registry before I went to IMGburn--which I like quite well. After I uninstalled it I even went back to an earlier restore point before I installed IMGburn. I'm betting with you G...makes perfect sense that the burner is crap. I'd really like to try a pre-burned distro, but don't really know how much cash I'd need to have to get them to send me one. I think that even this burner would still play back correctly burned media and probably even let it install, should I get that far.

I would ask my neighbour if I could burn an iso on his pc, but he's paranoid about anything to do with his pc as he knows not about it, and when problems happen (fairly often to my mind), he has an expensive tech support guy he knows come over to fix it for him. I don't think he'd be comfortable letting me burn anything linux, as he'd think he was setting himself up for trouble, and I don't want to put him on the spot.

I couldn't see where on the linux home page that they offered pre-burned distros, but I'd like to know what I'd need to do to get one, and how much cash they need for it? I suppose that my DVD could still faulter even trying to boot a good iso image, but it might be worth a try...my options are a little bit limited.

[Tuffies Son]

WOW there's much more to regedit than I knew about. I wish Mr. G could look at my registry and see what I've really got in there.

[ZemaTalon]

Here ya go TS, this is an ad from distrowatch.com:

distrowatchad.png

I've seen others on there, some cheaper I think. DVD burners can be had for $18 on Newegg (free shipping) and on Amazon. I didn't check pcliquidators, they have cheap used stuff, but that would be kind of iffy with something like a burner.

I know you've tried installing to a flash drive, but have you tried installing from a flash drive? I've done a number of installs that way, like on my netbook which has no optical drive.

[Tuffies Son]

I actually thought of a friend who I've asked to burn me a xfce dvd, and he's done it, so I will have that on Saturday eve. Thanks for the post Zema, now I know where to get other distros if I need them. For at least this week, I've got to pass on dishing out even the $18 but soon I hope to grab one and swap it out. I think I'll like xfce and am anxious to try it out.

[Tuffies Son]

So, my friend burned me a copy of xfce and when I went to boot from the normal mode, it looked like cave paintings, but first put up a splash-screen that I hadn't gotten to on any previous attempt. I then tried to boot through using compatibility mode, and was for a few seconds, hopeful that it would boot all the way...but it froze up on me.

I now have two thoughts about booting from a live dvd...1) my dvd burner might be so lame that it won't even read a good burn properly. 2) My mobo is capable of running 64 bit op systems, and though I run 32 bit xp home in it now, I might have to be trying only 64 bit live DVDs to be compatible with my hardware???

The disk that my friend burned for me is xfce 32 bit. Do either of those possibilities seem like they could be the thing that's preventing me from booting?

[Dark Angel]

You can run a 32bit os just fine on 64bit hardware. I'm getting a mite suspicious that your DVD drive is wonky though.

[Bad Haircut]

TS. Have you tried a burning and testing a small lightweight distro. one that is designed to work on older hardware? Just to check everything works as it should. Something like Puppy or DSL would do.

Odds on if either one of them doesn't boot to desktop then you've got hardware issues - then it's just a case of sussing what.