[Sugar-devel] Unbootable machine

[H. Peter Anvin]

Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> Hello Peter & Jeremy,
> 
> I've found an ordinary desktop PC (with Phoenix Award BIOS 6.00PG) that
> won't boot off a USB stick created by livecd-tools-024 with syslinux
> (tested both versions 3.75 and 3.81).
> 
> The boot process drops to the "boot:" prompt with an error message:
> 
>   could not find kernel image: linux
> 
> The same USB stick boots fine on any other computer I could find.
> Does it seem like a syslinux bug?  And if turns out to be a known BIOS
> bug, is there a good workaround?
> 

I need much more details; *all* Award BIOSes make in the past 10-12
years have version number 6.00PG.

Also look for how you have configured your BIOS... some Award BIOSes
have USB-ZIP, USB-HDD, USB-FDD configurations; you generally want USB-HDD.

There are some BIOSes which will boot from USB *only* if it was
formatted with 64 heads, 32 sectors; apparently due to some odd notion
that only zipdrives would be USB.

	-hpa

-- 
H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center
I work for Intel.  I don't speak on their behalf.