Bootloader does not show up. Blank screen.

[rohtie]

My laptop screen goes blank right after the bios is loaded. Live CDs have no effect either.

I installed arch linux to my whole HDD today. Last time I installed ubuntu linux to my whole HDD, the same problem happened.

The way I fixed the problem last time was by formatting the HDD with an internal HDD dock and then installing windows with linux dual boot.

As I do not want to go through the hassle by installing windows again, and I would be very delighted if anyone had an alternate way. I really want my laptop to be windows free!

It seems to me that my laptop is somehow constructed to crash / go blank if no windows partition / boot loader is detected. I have no idea why they would do that, maybe you have a better explanation?

Any help would be very appreciated, Thank you!

[Lostfarmer]

Live CDs have no effect either.

Are you saying a live cd will not boot up ? If so, how did you install arch ?

What is the make/model , age of laptop ?

Do you know if 'arch' uses grub legacy or grub 2 ?

[rohtie]

Are you saying a live cd will not boot up ? If so, how did you install arch ?

What is the make/model , age of laptop ?

Do you know if 'arch' uses grub legacy or grub 2 ?

Live cd worked before I installed linux on the whole HDD.


TARGA traveler 1524 x2
About 3-5 years old

[devils casper]

Which Graphics Card your Laptop have? It could be a Graphics Card problem. It should have displayed Boot Menu though.

Boot up from LiveCD and execute this in Terminal

lspci | grep -i vga

Post output here.

Execute fdisk -l command. How many partitions does it list?

[rohtie]

Which Graphics Card your Laptop have? It could be a Graphics Card problem. It should have displayed Boot Menu though.

Boot up from LiveCD and execute this in Terminal

lspci | grep -i vga

Post output here.

Execute fdisk -l command. How many partitions does it list?

I have an ATI card.
However I already said I could not boot from live cd. No matter what I boot from, the screen goes blank after BIOS.

I know that I have three partitions on my /dev/sda
/boot - EXT2
/ - EXT4
/home - EXT4

However I noticed something weird while I installed grub through arch linux. It detected two sda's - I choose the first one.

[Lostfarmer]

Live cd worked before I installed linux on the whole HDD.

However I already said I could not boot from live cd. No matter what I boot from, the screen goes blank after BIOS.

With the above 2 statements indicates you need to enter BIOS and change the boot order and have the CD as 1st boot device. That should permit booting into the a live cd. Also when in the BIOS check just what HDD's it sees.

[rohtie]

With the above 2 statements indicates you need to enter BIOS and change the boot order and have the CD as 1st boot device. That should permit booting into the a live cd. Also when in the BIOS check just what HDD's it sees.

Boot from CD is already the first option. Besides, the same happens when I use the boot device chooser (F11).

So that is not the problem.

If I remove the HDD, my laptop boots from CD just fine.

[MikeTbob]

Boot from CD is already the first option. Besides, the same happens when I use the boot device chooser (F11).

So that is not the problem.

If I remove the HDD, my laptop boots from CD just fine.

Check the HDD cables for dirt/dust bunnies and connected securely on both ends. If you have them, check your jumper settings on the HDD, and CDROM they may have fallen off or wiggled loose. Check all motherboard connections, RAM, blow out the dust, blah blah blah. Finally, test the HDD using another machine if possible.
Your HDD may be fried, so brace yourself for that possibility.

[Lostfarmer]

After checking items posted by 'MikeTbob' , you may need to try booting via a USB drive. Have never done so , so can not tell you the best way to go about it.

Can try using PLOP on a USB drive to select the CD to boot. If you try all I can do is point you to some How To sites.
Plop - Home
From MS Windows : Plop Linux - LiveCD, USB boot, PXE network boot, antivirus, rescue, partimage, NTFS, tftp, avast, f-prot
From Linux : Plop Linux - LiveCD, USB boot, PXE network boot, antivirus, rescue, partimage, NTFS, tftp, avast, f-prot

Can not say if your comp will boot to the USB when it will not boot the the CD with HDD connected. Do not try booting the the hdd with PLOP.

There are live USB linux tools but I have no idea which to try.

[rohtie]

I think I will just solve it the same way i did last time, by formatting the HDD in my external HDD mounter, then install some kind of windoze and then dual boot it with linux.

My orginal question was if there was any quicker / better way to do this. As of now I can't think of any other options.

Thank you all for trying

Though if you can think of anything, I will be very happy!