[Solved] Dell Latitude C640 booting issue

[ohjrson]

OK, This is what I did. The Dell in question is the same one that I had the wireless issue.
Now I have tried to update it to Beryl. I tried using the live cd but then realized it is only a dvd-rom. So, I created a live DVD and the laptop booted up from there. I installed the OS on the drive and right at the end of the installer it says that the installer crashed. It would not shut down unless I clicked on shutdown. Then it hangs or something and I have to hold power button for 5 sec.

When I try to boot up the machine it does nothing. What have I done.?
Even if I hit F12 and select the HDD it still will not boot. I have even tried to boot from the grub screen with boot internal hdd, I see booting from local disk and a courser (<--spelling) below that, but that is it. What have I done or what can I do now?

Many thanks.
Ohjrson

[sonic]

If the installation has crashed that's why is not booting.


You can make a bootable USB easily from command line and boot from that. It's faster.

Code:

sudo dd if=mini.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync

"if" is the name of the ISO file and "of" is the name of the USB device.

[Scott(0)]

Hi Ohjrson

I agree with Sonic. If you can, try a live bootable USB. Some people report that installation problems they had with live CD/DVDs stop once when they switch to USB media.

~Scott

[ohjrson]

I completely agree with a USB installation, I have used them before. However this Dell Latitude c640 only has one usb on the back where you would "dock" it. It works like regular USB when the unit is on, But, I cannot get it to appear on start up when booting to use that. Otherwise I would have been done long ago. Any idea how to get that to function on start up?

Its a Dell Latitude c640, with 1025 MB of ram and a Mobile Intel Pentium 4, 2 ghz processor, an ATA Toshiba 8025 HDD, and a Toshiba DVD ROM
Any info to get that to work would be great!!!

Thanks. 

BTW Valtam I realize that I may have this in the wrong section of the forum. (SORRY) I would move it myself but I don't know how. So if you please place this where it should be. (I'll consider my hands thrashed vigorously.)
Many thanks.

[Scott(0)]

This may help with booting to usb. I took it from this page:
http://www.linlap.com/dell_latitude_c640


* Since there is no optical drive and no option to boot from USB from the bios, 1 of 2 things can be done.

1. Install with a USB flash drive. The BIOS does not allow for booting from a flash drive but there is a work around. Burn the .ISO file on the flash drive then run it. On the first setup screen choose demo and installation and you will be asked to install the CD Boot Helper, choose yes. This will install a file on your computer that will force a boot into Ubuntu.
2. Do the same as above but with an external USBCD Drive.
-note- The laptop has a USB 1.1 port so install will take quite a while.

Take a look at the link above for more info.


~Scott

[ohjrson]

OK Had this huge reply written back to you Scott. However, somehow (I don't know how) I got the laptop to boot from the USB, And it all installed. I am now getting my preferred browsers etc...

As soon as I am done with all that I will look and see how it was that I was able to get it to boot from the USB device.

YEAH!!!

Thanks for the help.

[Scott(0)]

8) Way to go with the perseverance, good work.

[ohjrson]

Yeah... its all good. Runs well for the machine. I still have to look at what I have in the boot process. I am just taking a break from all that. (Plus the wife has a list of things I need to do if you catch my drift) Then I will post back in here and mark it solved and all.

The Dell Latitude C640 is actually running pretty well. Aside from the wireless having to try to connect about 4 times before finally staying connected it is actually running well. I am impressed.

Thanks again for the help... I'll try and get that info posted in here as soon as I am able.

Update: Here is what I have in the boot up to get the 1 single USB to work and boot the live USB.

>C/Dock or C/Dock II top PCI slot NIC
>CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
>Onboard NIC
>Internal HDD

Near as I can figure the top slot was what did it. There are other options in there such as 1/4 floppy etc. But none of those seemed to work. This configuration is what did it.
Hope this helps somebody get theirs to work...
Thanks again.

Ohjrson

[N4RPS]

Hello!

I have a C640 with LL2 on it also. I will have to try this, as I have previously had to use Plop Boot Manager to get USB boot support on this model...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[ohjrson]

Sure N4RPS
    Just in case that configuration does not do anything for you. There is one other thing I did do before, that I am not sure I got "turned off" because it still tries to do it (Boot up from server). Just before I got the USB to work I did have the laptop configured to boot from a network server, of course I had nothing configured and I more or less just did it because of frustration, but when that was proving to be fruitless, I changed the boot up sequence again, the way I have it listed now, with the exception of disabling (at least that's what I thought I did) the server/network boot. I still had my Live DVD in there and when the laptop started booting I noticed the DVD was not spinning and I was like WTF, NO WAY!!!.... Oh cool.... so I did not move the laptop in any way and once the live usb loaded I went right away to install and it worked. So Don't know if what I have listed will actually work but there is the whole story. Hope that configuration works for you. Let me know if it did. OK?

Thanks
Ohjrson