MEPIS Community Forum

The memory in my netbook is maxed out at 2 GB. I did that the same day I bought it. I do mods like that myself. Not to be bragging, but I'm a retired electronics tech, and an Extra Class Amateur Radio Operator, so stuff like that is routine for me. The covers on my computers are on zippers. I'm beginning to believe that the bootable thumbdrive is going to be the solution to this dilemma. I just need to find the time to do that. Sundays tend to be busy around my house. I did verify the md5sum on the download that is the basis of my M11 DVD. Yes they matched. My netbook is a 32 bit machine and I'm trying to load 32 bit M11

I really appreciate all of the constructive replies I've received.

Can we take it that increasing rootdelay to 30 did not help?

The Atom N450 in your Asus Eee PC 1005PEB it is a 64 bit CPU. Note the Yes beside Intel 64 under Advanced Technologies.

http://ark.intel.com/products/42503/Int ... _66-GHz%29

But, unless you're going to install 4GB or more memory in it, there's probably no benefit to using a 64 bit operating system with it.

As lucky9 suggested, you may want to try a longer root delay to give everything more time to initialize during bootup.

If that doesn't work, note that you can also use an SDHC card formatted as FAT32 (the way they come by default), or even a USB attached card reader using a FAT32 formatted memory card in it (SDHC, CompactFlash, Memory Stick Pro Duo, etc.) with Unetbootin. It doesn't have to be one of the USB Thumb Drives. I've used Unetbootin that way with card readers and CompactFlash cards before. But, as inexpensive as USB flash Drives are now, I keep live distros on them now (I sometimes carry several of them in my pocket with linux distros, including malware scan products that have Live Linux versions available.

Good move. I had a machine that for whatever reason wouldn't boot the DVD, but the USB worked just fine. Use UNetbootin. Should take just a few minutes if you use an already downloaded ISO as the source.

I didn't have time to do very much with the computer yesterday. I'm going to try the rootdelay=30 here in just a few minutes. If that fails I have aan 8GB thumb drive that I'll try. I truly didn't realize that the processor in this machine is 64 bit. I'm going to look into that and further memory expansion at a later date. When I bought the machine it had 1 GB of ram. I purchased and installed another 1 GB memotry car which brought it to its published max of 2 GB. I realize that manufacturers don't always publish what the true max memory capability of their products are. I need to research that question further, but not today.

Still frustrated, but seeing better possibilities

The size of the memory module on the memory card that is the inhibiting factor. Not the total on the card. Memory interface chips that are used will determine the max allowed. They choose to limit, probably, because of the heat produced.

I tried rootdelay=30 with various combinations of cheat codes. All to no avail. The black screen is alive and well. Now I am going to try making a bootable thumb drive. Hopefully this will be the answer.

Still frustrated,

I built a bootable thumbdrive. the system reported that the copy on the thumb drive is error free. I set the boot sequence on the netbook so that removable device is the first boot source. The netbook did NOT boot. It went straight to the hard drive. Then I set st the second and third boot sources to disabled. The netbook reported no bootable device available.

I've run out of options at this point. I'm going to try booting the tower from this thumbdrive.

In similar instances in the past with my netbook, I have had luck either by reformatting the thumb drive or by using a different thumb drive altogether.

I've got an older Asus Eee PC and I can use the ESC key to get a boot menu, without modifying the BIOS boot order.

But, doing some digging around for the 1005 models, it looks like Asus may be using something called "Boot Booster" than can cause issues booting from USB.

Here's what I found on page about booting from USB with an Asus 1005PEB like your netbook:



http://www.cnpbagwell.com/linux/asus-ee ... from-linux

Here's what I found on a page about a different Asus 1005 model (1005HA). But, I suspect they the same issue from what it sounds like where you need to go into the BIOS Setup, then exit before you can use the ESC key to select the desired boot device:



http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic ... ion-guide/