How to install Puppy via USB onto old Asus netbook?

Booting, installing, newbie
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bigpup
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Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#46 Post by bigpup »

Screen going black problem.

There is also the power saving for using on laptops. That may be what is kicking in after so long of no use.

To be honest, I never see this problem, but I do not leave a computer unused for long periods.

Understand this. If you put the save on a partition that Windows used. There is a good chance the file system is fragmented. Windows defrag program has to be used to defrag it.
Puppy stuff stored on a Windows fragmented file system wil not always work, because of the fragmentation of the files.

Linux file systems, for all practical purposes, do not fragment.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

DavidSpector
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Joined: Sat 16 Dec 2017, 16:23

#47 Post by DavidSpector »

Having had so much success with one Asus HE1000 netbook, I decided to try another one that I sometimes use. This time I put the files tahr-6.0.5_PAE.iso and unetbootin-windows-657.exe directly on the USB flash disk drive and ran unetbootin from the flash drive to create the Linux files and the boot files.

When I booted to the flash drive, after a few seconds it gave me an error message: "puppy_tahr_6.0.5.sfs not found", and gave me a Linux prompt.

I rebooted and pressed F2 to get help, but nothing seemed likely.

I'll try again, this time starting with the two files on my Windows computer, but this seems like a strange sort of error to happen just because there were two extra files on the USB drive. I'll bet it makes perfect sense to someone here.

PS - Happy holidays to all! *Snowflake lazily falling*

Sailor Enceladus
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#48 Post by Sailor Enceladus »

I would install Unetbootin to the Hard Drive, not the USB, then right-click on the usb in Windows and format it as fat32 so it's a fresh empty partition, then use Unetbootin to install Puppy to the USB. Then before booting into the USB, I would make sure the boot flag on the USB is set (you can do this with Rufus or GParted or maybe something already in Windows).

DavidSpector
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Joined: Sat 16 Dec 2017, 16:23

#49 Post by DavidSpector »

Sailor Enceladus,

I thought I already said this earlier: I ran Unetbootin on the hard drive of my Windows 8.1 computer, not on the USB drive.

The USB drive came from the manufacturer formatted in FAT32.

I've never heard of a boot flag on a USB drive, so clearly I don't know how to set it.

Hope this helps. Currently, I'm trying out EasyPeasy, which comes with lots of promises.

cthisbear
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Joined: Sun 29 Jan 2006, 22:07
Location: Sydney Australia

#50 Post by cthisbear »

I was recently given a new 2 gig usb....
obviously never used in a box.

Unfortunately it had an error.

Puppy couldn't fix it to boot...it could not even format it...unusual.

All my Windows apps couldn't fix it to boot, although Windows did
format it.

20 minutes lost trying to fix this loser.

The reason I persisted was my 16 gig usb was missing in action.
Of course the next day it showed up in a drawer.

Anyway I tried an old version of RMPrepUSB

Winner.
It booted in my troublesome HP laptop...an on all my PCs and laptops.

There is even a video on the site.
As usual >>> take care when using any formatter.

https://www.rmprepusb.com/

I am running 3 pups on it.

Puppy Can Bike >> a remaster of Precise Puppy 5.7.1.

https://www.canbike.org/off-topic/linux ... 5-4-3.html

Woof CE Debian Stretch by ttuuxxx
a personal favourite of mine.

Downloads...

http://smokey01.com/ttuuxxx/WoofCe/

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=109789

Dpup Stretch CE Release Candidate..... by Radky

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=112125

All are running fine on one usb.

Chris.

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bigpup
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Location: S.C. USA

#51 Post by bigpup »

The USB drive came from the manufacturer formatted in FAT32.
It is probably already flagged as boot.
Manufactures usually do that as part of the formatting to fat32.
They do not want people calling them complaining it will not boot an OPS. They use fat32 format for the same reason. Everything knows how to use fat32 format.
Having had so much success with one Asus HE1000 netbook, I decided to try another one that I sometimes use.
That would seem to me that the netbook that is having problems may have something going bad with the hardware in it.

Your statement says it works OK on one HE1000 netbook, but not a different one?

About having trouble making a save.
How much free space is on the USB flash drive?
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

Sailor Enceladus
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Joined: Mon 22 Feb 2016, 19:43

#52 Post by Sailor Enceladus »

DavidSpector wrote:The USB drive came from the manufacturer formatted in FAT32.

I've never heard of a boot flag on a USB drive, so clearly I don't know how to set it.
I checked the last Puppy USB stick I had made (July 2016 :) ). It did have the boot flag set. When I unset it, the message I got was "Missing operating system" then it ignored the USB and went to Hard Drive, so I guess it was a BIOS message. Guessing bigpup is probably right and this isn't your problem, you can check if the boot flag is there in GParted (screenshots below). I would also try reformatting the USB partition(s) before installing puppy to it just in case. Like cthisbear I have a 16GB flash stick that didn't boot puppy/linux/dos/anything too, though my smaller usb stick did on the same machine, I am curious now to check these 2 things and maybe try rmprepusb on it. Might need to copy the 16GB of music off of it before doing more testing (so far I see the 16GB one claims it's a USB 2.0 stick, and my drive is apparently 1.1, and it has both boot and lba flags set).
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Screenshot.png
my smaller usb stick that boots puppy
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Screenshot(1).png
right-click a drive -> Manage Flags options
(10.17 KiB) Downloaded 333 times

DavidSpector
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Joined: Sat 16 Dec 2017, 16:23

Results: Puppy sometimes, EasyPeasy others

#53 Post by DavidSpector »

"How much free space is on the USB flash drive?"

8 GB, a brand new USB drive. However, I just tried formatting a similar drive that Linux had made two partitions on and got a generic error message from Windows stating failure. Perhaps China is giving us marginal hardware. Or maybe putting Linux partitions on a drive ruins it for Windows.

ADDED:

But on the other hand, I've been able to format another flash drive that did not have a Linux partition on it. That is suggestive.

But, on the other hand, I've had phenomenal success with live EasyPeasy. Turns out that because it comes from Ubuntu, it always Saves automatically but one must specify some free space in unetbootin. Once I did that my customizations saved and I became a happy camper with EasyPeasy. There is NO current help for EasyPeasy, but it comes with many apps and experimentation is in my blood.

So, overall, Puppy 0, EasyPeasy 1 in soccer scores for one Asus 1000HE. My wife's 1000HE, however, continues running Pale Moon fast and (except for rare generic error messages from Pale Moon that resolve when the web page is reloaded) she is totally happy with Puppy, giving Puppy a score of 1 on that computer.
Last edited by DavidSpector on Sat 30 Dec 2017, 13:50, edited 1 time in total.

Sailor Enceladus
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Joined: Mon 22 Feb 2016, 19:43

#54 Post by Sailor Enceladus »

Sailor Enceladus wrote:I would also try reformatting the USB partition(s) before installing puppy to it just in case. Like cthisbear I have a 16GB flash stick that didn't boot puppy/linux/dos/anything too, though my smaller usb stick did on the same machine, I am curious now to check these 2 things and maybe try rmprepusb on it. Might need to copy the 16GB of music off of it before doing more testing (so far I see the 16GB one claims it's a USB 2.0 stick, and my drive is apparently 1.1, and it has both boot and lba flags set).
Yes! Removing the factory created FAT32 partition with GParted, then creating a new FAT32 partition with GParted in it's place, then adding the boot flag to it, then installing Puppy onto the usb did fix it, and now this 16GB flash drive can boot puppy. It could not boot puppy with the original factory FAT32 partition, it would always say "Missing operating system" when Puppy was installed to it. I have two USB 16GB sticks by the same company (Nexxtech) that are like this. The FAT32 partition needs to be deleted, and replaced with one created by GParted. I'm not crazy, this is a real thing! (for anyone who has any doubts, I can prove it on the 2nd one, which has still not been reformatted yet). All FAT32 partitions are not created equal apparently. :)

DavidSpector
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Joined: Sat 16 Dec 2017, 16:23

USB drives are special

#55 Post by DavidSpector »

'All FAT32 partitions are not created equal apparently."

Oh, I already knew that. Also, and I'm not sure if this is the reason, USB drives have hidden memory containing programming to rotate the 4096-byte blocks through address translationi so that writing is done evenly across all the available space. Without this programming, even the heavy use of a small amount of memory would rather quickly ruin the drive. With that programming, the same situation could be maintained successfully almost forever.

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bigpup
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#56 Post by bigpup »

Windows has to have a special program installed to be able to access Linux formats.

Just like Linux needs a special program to access Windows formats.
Puppy comes with that program for Linux.

With USB flash drives.
There are some really bad ones out there being passed off as quality products.

If you are dealing with buying stuff in China.
I wish you luck finding the good ones!!
'All FAT32 partitions are not created equal apparently."
When you partition or format you do not delete data that is already on the drive.
It simply deletes the info on where that stuff is and starts fresh with no location info.
When you put data on the drive. It is suppose to overwrite anything there with new code.
Key word suppose to!!
If that old code is very close to the code you are writing to that location on the drive.
That can sometimes cause problems.
The writing process thinks the code is already there and does not change it to the new code.

This is what sometimes can happen.
Key word can happen, but thankfully, not very often.

Also, deleting something only deletes the info on where it is on the drive. The old data code is still there until it is overwritten by other data code.

Putting different versions of Puppy on a drive and deleting them. Is basically putting very similar code into the same place on the drive.

I have had drives I had to write all 1 or 0 to the drive.
This did delete the old data.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

hamoudoudou

LICK added in forum francophone ,

#57 Post by hamoudoudou »

LICK added in forum francophone , Should fit computer needs at SylvieBidy home

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