[adorableedgar]

hey i built a pc with the m2n-mx se plus motherboard from asus. I've been trouble installing many distros of Linux so i thought it was time to try a BIOS update. HOWEVER, i dont have a floppy drive....so i was wondering if any one could help me create a boot CD. so far i've done this....

-downloaded the update from the asus website.
-i have Nero 7 essentials which i got from a DVD burner i bought
-i also have InfraRecorder and IMGburn
-i've unzipped the update and it produced three different files
-i've tried burning from IMGburn and have found the option to imitate a floppy disk
-IMGburn can't "see" the files, i click browse but the folder in which my update is located shows empty...
- i also dont know which of the 3 files to burn onto the CD...or do i burn them all??

anyhelp would be so much appreciated

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anyone.....

[adorableedgar]

anyone.....

[Titan8990]

You are probably looking at two options. One is buying a floppy drive. They cost about $5-10. Second, some MOBOs now have the ability the flash the BIOS from a thumb drive. Check your MOBO manual to see if your board has this ability.

[John Hook]

adorableedgar

Unfortunately, most motherboard MFG's only provide BIOS updates that can be run from DOS or Windows. With a little bit of searching, you should be able to find a site where you can download a bootable ISO image of DOS such that you can FLASH your BIOS from a bootable CD.

Check out this site:

http://gentoo-wiki.c...a_DOS_boot_disk

or just Google search on "DOS BOOT CD ISO FILE"

You'll need some way of burning a CD from an ISO file with most of these solutions. There are several FREE programs for Linux that allow you to burn ISO image files to CDR discs.

Hope this helps.

- John

[Tyger]

I addition to what John Hook says, follow the instructions very carefully about what files should be on the floppy. Some of the regular ms-dos files will cause errors when you flash the BIOS. You can just borrow a floppy drive from another machine for the duration. you don't even need to mount it.

[adorableedgar]

YAY i updated my BIOS, turns out that with this board and EZ flash all u have to do is burn a CD with the update named "M2PlUSSE.ROM" and press alt+F2 with the CD in the CDrom drive and it updates by its self. it took 5 minutes. but the problem is that Linux still doesn't work.....no distros i've tried....idk whats wrong because i've been on newegg and tigerdirect and some people leave reviews like "this board is great, not very expandible but works great with Linux" so i'm sitting here getting ready to take that board out of my pc and throw it out the window....maybe theres a certain configuration i need to do or the people that leave comments all happen to use the same distro of Linux that i have yet to consider even trying....or it could be some other hardware issue...but idk what...i've tried replacing SATA hdd for IDE hdd, different DVDrom, i've run multiple memtest and they all do great individually, (not so great on dual channel, but i think BIOS update fixed that....i'll still check tho)

[Titan8990]

What kind of problems are you having with Linux? What distros have you tried? Have they all been live CDs? How far do you get through installation (if at all)?

[John Hook]

adorableedgar,

I did some research on your new ASUS board and found the following at

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16813131249

"On linux, if you try booting from a live cd and get a kernel panic or something, you just need to change the acpi options in the bios. Set your memory speed or it might default low. Not 100% sure if the onboard LAN is working under linux, I'm using a gigabit PCI lan card. Also worth noting that this thing seems to be able to underclock your CPU, but not overclock it."

Since this is a new board - you may want to search around for specific Linux drivers for it. Check out ASUS's tech support site or google you board's model and 'driver' - this should take you to sites where drivers are posted if Asus doesn't provide Linux drivers.

As far as which Linux distro I'd recommend - I'm partial to the Fedora Core Linux distros as they are a spin-off of RedHat Linux. I've had good luck installing and running Fedora Core on a variety of hardware. Just my opinion - so I'm not looking for a drawn out debate from others about which Linux is the best.

Hope this helps.

- John

[adorableedgar]

What kind of problems are you having with Linux? What distros have you tried? Have they all been live CDs? How far do you get through installation (if at all)?

Okay i built a pc about a month ago. Ever since then i've been trying to get Ubuntu 7.1, Ubuntu Hardy Haron BETA, Pc Linux, Suse Linux, Mandriva, and Fedora 8. At first i was able to get the Ubuntu 7.1 live CD working with the noapic option, so later i decided to install it to the HDD. Once i restarted i got a blank screen with a flashing cursor, meaning that the GRUB boot loader didn't install correctly....i reinstalled, this time when trying to boot from the hdd i got the splash screen and the loading bar filled like 3/4s of the way then it suddely stopped and took me to a black screen with a cursor and nothing happens from there. Then i tried all the other LInux distros i mentioned above, and i couldn't get even the LIVE CD working on any of them.

After failing to install LInux i ran memtest and got tons of problems in test 7 in dual channel mode, then i ran with a single DIMM and got abosolutely no errors on either stick individually. i tried booting with only one dimm stick and it gave the same problem. I also tried installing to an old IDE hdd i had laying around and got different results yet still unsuccessful ones...

After doing some googleing i came across a thread that was about the m2n mx board (mine is the m2n mx SE plus) that mentioned someone disableing the Hpet acpi tables (or something like that) on the southbrige chip and it resolved having to add noapic to the boot options, problem was that it required a BIOS update and i had no floppy drive to do it the easy way....FORTUNATELY the asus board i got came with EZ flash which allowed me to burn a regular CD with the update on it labeled "M2PLUSSE.ROM" and the board would automatically look for it ... AFter updating the BIOS i was able to disable that option on the southbridge and now i was able to run almost all the Linux distros i had previously burned but once i put them on the HDD they would not work i kept getting those blank screen. So i thought that it could maybe be that both the hdd i had were faulty, so i ran the seagate hdd tester on the currently installed hdd and i ran the long test and the drive passed with no errors.

I called ASUS and they blamed it on the NVidia chipset, so the guy said to simply try mandriva and that mandriva was the one to most likely work. So i burned Mandriva live CD and the live CD worked, HOWEVER i noticed something funny when booting the live CD: right before getting to the desktop the Nvidia logo came up followed by the root@localhost login (it stayed at the root@localhost login for about 1.5 seconds) then it just disappeared and went to the desktop. i disregarded that because i was able to use the live cd flawlessly. installed, rebooted, got the Nvidia logo screen i had when booting the LIVE CD then i got the same root@localhost login screen BUT this time it didn't go away! i typed the "diskdrake" command to modify my display setting and the default is set to the "nvidia graphics card" and i dont recall the monitor at the time but when i modify it to use the versa drive and select my monitor from the list (sony sdm s81) i click on the "test setting" option and it the computer just freezes on a blue screen with an X for the mouse cursor...

i thought "hmm maybe the BIOS update will help with all the other Linux distros", and after trying all the live CD's i decided that i would keep mandrive, but since it didn't work i went on to Fedora 8, but after the Live CD install i tried rebooting the computer but all i got was a black screen with "L 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 ..." and so fourth....there are like six lines of 9's. I've tried reinstalling Ubuntu again but i can't seem to get anything else besides the "L 99 99..." thing.... i dont know what to do any more i can run all of the linux distros i've tried except Suse linux....

i've also tried Hardy Heron alternate install CD, which always fails at different stages of installtion....i'ved tried the Gutsy Gibbon Ubuntu alternate install CD which always fails when installing a boot loader, the live CD version however always give a successful installation message with the option to reboot


system specs
Asus MSN-MS SE PLUS NVIDIA nForce 430 MCP -MOTHERBOARD
AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4000+ socket AM2 - CPU
Seagate 80 GB serial ATA 7200/8mg/SATA-3G
Kingston 1024MG pc4200 DDR2 533mhz (2x512)
Aopen 16x DVD ROM 1648L pro chameleon retail


-------that is exactly what is going on. lol if u need any other details let me know.

[Titan8990]

I believe that your MBR (master boot record) may have been currupted in one of those installation attempts. I will have to check tomorrow for the name of the utility I used to repair mine when it got corrupted from a Fedora 5 installation. I will get back to you on steps to repair your MBR.

Edited by Titan8990, 31 March 2008 - 09:00 PM.

[Tyger]

I tend to agree with titan8990 that you have some kind of corruption on your hard drive. You get all those nines when the boot loader can't find the stage 1.5 files. I don't know if the hard drive you used was new or "clean" when you first put it in but it certainly isn't now. I would go even further than Titan and say put DBAN on a CD or floppy and use it to write your drive to zeros. Then it will be completely blank and you can make a fresh start. All the Linux versions that you have described know how to deal with blank drives. You can Google for DBAN +download.

[Titan8990]

Follow along with Tyger. It turns out the method that I had used previously was not legitimate, thus I can not recommend it.

It could take a long time to write your drive to 0s so you may want to make it an overnight project.

[adorableedgar]

okay i followed the advice and got Dban and did the quick format option. Once it finished it ended with the message "DBAN finished with non-fatal errors.
This is usually caused by disks with bad sectors.
Send the log file with all support requests."

does this mean that my HDD is dead? or are non-fatal errors fixable? I recently bought Vista and tried to install that too but it had a hard time formatting the same drive as ^, after about 2-3 retries of reformatting it was successful but after expanding files it said "Vista could not prepare the computer to reboot and continue on to the next stage BLAH BLAH BLAH, please restart the installation" ....if my hdd is dead i will be super extra mega pissed because that hdd is brand new (well was, and so it technically was DOA because i wasn't able to install any OS since day 1, and i already called ASUS about the prob, the first guy said that there should be no reason to not be able to run Linux out of the box and 2nd guy said "well it aint gonna work, get vista"1)


EDIT: i also ran the seagate HDD tester thing from their website, i did the "short" test, the "long" test, and the "acoustics" test and it came with no errors on either tests....

Edited by adorableedgar, 04 April 2008 - 05:03 PM.

[Tyger]

There shouldn't be any reason you can't install Linux or Vista to a properly working hard drive. Because I know how quickly you can install it, about ten minutes on that machine, I would say try installing PCLinuxOS on it and see if it gives you errors during the install. If it installs and boots hit the esc key when the main boot screen comes up and you will be able to see if any errors occur. If it gives you errors related to the file system then recheck the drive with the diagnostics. I don't know who you got the drive from but I would check with them about returning it if any more problems occur. You may need a diagnostic error code to return it.

[adorableedgar]

I got my hard drive from tigerdirect, its an OEM Seagate Barracuda 7200. I also already tried installing pclinux, at first I couldn't get the live Cd to work but then I got a bios update and I was able to run tons of live cd linuxs but the install nvr worked... I would "mounting" errors when trying to boot and on the text based installer the boot loader would never work.....do u know of any hdd testers because I don't think that the one I got off seagate website is that goof because it didn't recognise errors Dban did....