Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hello. I'm having a problem trying to make a W7 machine to boot BionicPup64 from the hard drive, without a CD rom.

I'm currently using the machine booting from a CD Rom to use Puppy, and removing the CD to boot Windows if needed. It's been years working that way.

But lately, the CD Rom started to give me trouble, perhaps scratched disk, or bad reader, or whatever, so I decided to install a boot loader and use it from the Hard Drive.

I had problems before installing different Puppy boot loaders on Windows machines, problems with the MBR, Windows not booting anymore, and so. More than once. That's why I was using the CD Rom method.

This time I decided to try the Windows Installer included in the bionicpup64-8.0-uefi.iso , LICK 1.3.1 , and followed instructions without success. Then downloaded the LICK latest version from the internet, with the same result.

What happens is detailed in these 3 screenshots. After rebooting, a boot menu appears to choose W7 or Lick boot loader, Windows boots fine, but if I choose LICK, some error messages show up, and nothing else, I need to reboot the machine.

When you shutdown Windows 7 did you do a normal shutdown?

Do not shutdown Windows any other way.

Do not shutdown in hibernate!

This is the Lick you tried using downloaded from the internet?
https://github.com/noryb009/lick/releas ... -win32.exe

To make sure you got a good install of Bionicpup64 8.0

Running Windows 7.

You can find the install of Bionicpup and it seems to have all the needed files.

Lick should have done a frugal install of Bionicpup on the Windows C drive.

Thanks very much.

I never use any hibernate function, I don't even know if my computer allows that feature.

BUT... I realize that clicking on my bionicpup64-8.0-uefi.iso is giving me an error ... I'll download a fresh copy and post back with more details.

Curious thing, the md5sum ckecks OK on that "damaged" iso

Update:

I've re did the whole process with a fresh ISO, deleting the previous install folders, and the result was exactly the same.

The files are present in the hard drive, even if the error message says it can't find "pupldr", the file is present at the hard drive boot partition (the only partition, BTW).

I'm trying to compare with my latptop computer, but it has an EFI system partition, so the install is different.
Perhaps I need to create a new boot partition... But I don't want to ruin the Windows install.

Lick
https://github.com/noryb009/lick/releas ... -win32.exe

This is the latest version of Lick and this is what you used?

A lot of people use Lick and have no issues.

You are downloading the Lick exec file and saving it to a location on the drive?
Clicking on it to run Lick?
I will assume you are doing everything correctly as it tells you in running Lick.

To eliminate one possible cause of issues.

Let's make sure the locations on the drive do not have fragmentation in the file system.
This can cause the downloaded Puppy files to be fragmented and cause issues.

In Windows 7
Run chkdsk and defrag on all the partitions on the internal drive.

If defrag reports a lot of fragmentation before it defrags.

After defragging, I would delete the Bionicpup install folder and the Lick installer.
Do clean fresh downloads of Bionicpup ISO and the Lick installer exec file.

Try the install again.

One topic about someone having similar problem as you.
Says fixed it by doing a new download of Lick exec file and using that to install with.
The first one they downloaded was not working completely correct.

Thanks.

I redid the whole process again: uninstalled LICK and deleted old files, old .iso image, defragmented and checked the NTFS partition using Windows7, downloaded and installed LICK again, downloaded a new bionicpup64 iso image, ran LICK again and installed the puppy iso again.

The result is the same. The same error. What I see weird is that the boot menu is giving me Win7 and LICK as boot options, not Win7 and Puppy.

My computer doesn't have UEFI but Bios.

Anyway, I give up with this. I'll keep using the CD to boot puppy. I don't want to ruin the Windows install doing something wrong with the MBR.

@fernan I have a Dell laptop that had Windows 7 for the OS which was upgraded to Windows 10. I took a risk and booted a Bionic32 via CD-ROM and then made a frugal install directory with a copy of the Bionic32 on one of the NTFS partitions and then simply ran Grub4DOS, which discovered the Bionic32 directory. I let Grub4Dos install.

I got lucky and on the next boot the Grub4Dos menu.lst opened up! I was able to boot Bionic32. But how to get Windows now to boot? Well I opened the /mnt/sda1/menu.lst and modified the Windows entry to use chainloader to call the Windows boot mechanism that still exists on the partition.

Works really well on a Dell INSPIRON 1505e (BIOS boot) with Windows 10 and many 32 bit Puppy Linux's side-by-side.

I could start the machine and look exactly at what the boot stanza looks like if it's something you'd want to try.

I looked and this is it (uuid is from the NTFS partition sda1) ->

title Windows (sda1 PBS)
uuid 0A0C871A0C86FFC5
chainloader +1

Thanks very much.

I'm not sure if I want to risk again a Windows install. As I mentioned, more than once I've ended with a broken Windows install, spending hours and hours investigating how to fix the MBR, and I think I have one or 2 machines in which Windows doesn't boot anymore. I'll stay on the safe side, booting from the CD, and burning a new CD if needed.