missing operating system? but it is there, flash drive not booting no idea why opties

[texas]

I installed delft on a 512 flash drive. My Toshiba tecra laptop is able to boot from usb but every time i try to boot from it is says missing operating system, the same thing happens on my friends dell. If i boot with cheatcode livecd from usb it works fine, I assume that I am missing some type of file, since I am able to boot from usb using damnsmalllinux and puppylinux, but i would really like to boot mcnlive since it is one of the few smaller distros that recognizes my wireless card


any help would be greatly appreciated
thank you very much

[kris]

Welcome.

I am assuming that you did not get any error messages when using the Create Live USB wizard?
And you did control the files on the stick?
And your BIOS is set to USB-HDD?
(puppy and damnsmall might use USB-ZIP, I am not sure)

Looks like the boot flag on the partition is not set.

Please do the following.

1. Start with the live cd, without plugged usb drive.
Plug it in. Wait two seconds.

Click on the 'Devices' icon on the desktop, you will see the flash drive. Open it.

2. Click up a terminal. Type: su (password is root)
Type: mount
Do you see your flash drive, for example /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1 ?

3. Type: fdisk -l /dev/sdX
(replace 'X', could be a or b or c 'l' stands for 'list', it is not an 'i')

Post here the output of the last command.

edit: the command is: fdisk -l /dev/sdX
(sorry, it's late here)

Dit bericht is bewerkt door kris: May 14 2007, 12:10 AM

[texas]

i donr know what this meens but it doesn't look good. its says wrong device but its the right one

Disk /dev/sdb1: 507 MB, 507201024 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 982 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1p1 ? 3197785 3442507 123339962 78 Unknown
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(518, 102, 15) logical=(3197784, 8, 6)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(743, 0, 62) logical=(3442506, 10, 27)
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb1p2 ? 429436 1198964 387841909+ 10 OPUS
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(205, 7, 0) logical=(429435, 10, 8)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(920, 235, 50) logical=(1198963, 3, 43)
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb1p3 ? 1854725 3758723 959615034 8b Unknown
Partition 3 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(260, 125, 54) logical=(1854724, 12, 16)
Partition 3 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(893, 46, 60) logical=(3758722, 13, 36)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb1p4 ? 17880 26137 4161536 a OS/2 Boot Manager
Partition 4 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(269, 111, 50) logical=(17879, 5, 54)
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(0, 0, 0) logical=(26136, 6, 6)
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

[texas]

any help anyone

[kris]

texas, when you asked we were asleep
Europe here ...

It looks like you don't have a good partitioning scheme on the flash drive.

You can delete the partition, create a new one (FAT16 or FAT32) and format it.

This can be done in the Mandriva Control Center. (in the third field, where it asks for a mount point, be sure to empty it, so no mount point is given!)

You can also use any MS Windows system. Be sure not to only format it but to first deleting the partition.

When you are done, control it by typing:

su
fdisk -l /dev/sdb

And run the wizard to setup the live usb.

[texas]

sorry bout that. i forgot about the whole time difference thing, plus i am in college so i often forget that people sleep in general.

I am trying what you said right now and will post the result in a few.


by the way I have been to Amsterdam before and you are lucky to live in such an amazing beautiful place

[texas]

sorry i took so long to reply your advice worked flawlessly thank you very much

[kris]

You are welcome, texas

And cheers from Amsterdam,

--chris