Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

ConnorBehan · 2014-04-18 00:16:53

I think I'm screwed, but I'll post here in case someone has seen this exact problem.

I turn this computer on and off every day. Yesterday I did not upgrade any packages. But when I tried this morning, I saw the Lilo screen and then:

Loading arch
BIOS data check successful
Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)... ok
early console in decompress_kernel

Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... Performing reolcations... done.
Booting the kernel.

The initramfs hooks would not run no matter how long I waited. I then inserted a different hard drive where the bootloader installed was Grub, but it also could not load Arch. Resetting the BIOS did not fix this.

I have tried inserting the two Arch Live CDs that I have (one official and one CTKArch). Neither of them can boot even though they have booted many times on this computer previously. The CTK one shows

NMI watchdog disabled for cpu0: unable to create perf event: -95
ERROR: Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 13
ERROR: Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 8
ERROR: Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 1
ERROR: Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 12
ERROR: Unable to locate IOAPIC for GSI 6

The only thing that can boot is a Windows 7 PE disc I burned. If I transfer my hard drive to another computer, everything is fine.

Do you think there's an actual transistor that broke on my old laptop? One that is crucial for booting Linux but not Windows? Does anyone have a clue what I might have to solder? The *very old* system is a Thinkpad a22m. The one dangerous thing I did yesterday was apply several patches to my video driver. However, they all seemed to work and it was a DDX, not a DRM.

ewaller · 2014-04-18 03:22:00

How much memory do you think your computer has?
How much memory does your computer think it has?

My first hunch is that one of your DIMMs have gone to that great repository in the cloud.

ConnorBehan · 2014-04-18 22:50:27

The answer to both questions is 512MB! The BIOS doesn't give much other information. Someone has made a flash demo of it.

ewaller · 2014-04-18 23:35:40

Well, I'll be! I would not try Arch with less than 2G, but I see the official number is 64M. I still think 512M is a bit thin, but if it worked before, it must be okay.
Have you your original install disk?

ConnorBehan · 2014-04-18 23:57:07

This was my first Arch box, so the disc I used was from 2007. I threw it out when package names and image names switched from "kernel26" to "linux".

R00KIE · 2014-04-19 13:05:47

I would try running memtest, just in case.

If you can boot windows then check the device manager and the error log in the administration console for any hint of hardware with problems. At the same time check the cpu temperature and see if it might be getting too hot.

Check if the bios backup battery is ok, replacing it with a new battery would be ideal. From personal experience I'd say a bad battery can cause weird problems.

There was a similar problem reported before but no solution posted [1], maybe you can try to contact the OP and see if you can find out what was the solution.

[1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=111438

ConnorBehan · 2014-04-26 06:42:20

I turned on the computer just now so I could open the CD drive, and booting made it all the way to a tty. Maybe I'll never know what the problem was. Leaving it unplugged for a day was not enough to fix it. But leaving it unplugged for a week was.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-04-18 00:16:53

Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

#2 2014-04-18 03:22:00

Re: Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

#3 2014-04-18 22:50:27

Re: Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

#4 2014-04-18 23:35:40

Re: Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

#5 2014-04-18 23:57:07

Re: Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

#6 2014-04-19 13:05:47

Re: Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

#7 2014-04-26 06:42:20

Re: Booting from disk or live CD no longer works from this mobo

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