Problems booting Haiku from USB

Hello

I am very curious to try Haiku but I have some problems booting.

I used Imagewriter to create an image on a USB drive. When I reboot and go into BIOS to boot from the USB, I get the Haiku boot screen and the icons start to light up only up to the forth icon. The fifth icon remains grey and a window opens up saying “Panic” Welcome to kernel debugging land” Could not read block 22145 I tried again and this time I got the same problem but the message was slightly different. “Could not read block 65558”. A new block.

As the fifth icon represents Loading CPU-specific modules I wonder if I might have unsuitable hardware, I use a HP laptop Mobile AMD Sempron Processor 3500+ 789 MHz 896MB RAM.

Any help with booting Haiku would be really appreciated.

Cheers!

Hello,

I am using Haiku already since a couple of years on a Dell Netbook Mini 9 and have been always booting from a USB key.

The very first versions of Haiku did not present this “module” problem that you are experiencing.
More recent versions unfortunately do have problems with some modules like ACPI, ACPM, user add-ons etc.
After a while with the fifth and other icons gray you enter “Debug land” and a white screen with lots of messages appear. At this point you have to restart your PC with turn OFF-turn ON (hardware, that is) - unless you prefer to Debug with debugging commands etc.

I have this same problem (I suppose it is the same…) - try to DISABLE some of the missing/troublesome modules doing the following:

1- when you turn your PC ON (assuming your Haiku USB-key is inserted into a USB port) and during the BIOS set-up screen (when you should press either F2 or Del to enter BIOS setup), press the SPACE Bar instead.
2- you should see the "Haiku Boot Loader Screen"
3- go to “Select safe mode operations” (using the UP/DOWN arrows)
4- press ENTER --> “Safe Mode Options” screen
5- DISABLE some options (UP/DOWN Arrows and select with Enter or Space bar - an X shows the selected item) --> I usually DISABLE user add-ons, APM and ACPI. Experiment with other options too.
6- select “Return to Main Menu” (press Enter)
7- select “Continue Booting” (press Enter)

and if all goes well the boot should pass beyond the “Hard-Disk + leaf icon” (at least this is what happens in my booting procedure)

One last note: in my case sometimes I have to repeat the above procedure before having a good Boot (kind of annoying but at least after a couple of attempts it works - Haiku boots quick and therefore you are not waiting too much…)

I hope this can help.

Good luck!

Roberto B.

PS: check also under: User Support Forum --> Boot Problem (created by Hank, replied by bbjimmy). This should be a definitive solution to the interactive way I have been using so far (but as they say here, be careful!)

Hello Roberto

First of all a big thanks for the step-by-step description on how to boot.

I tried what you suggested and when I press the spacebar and get to hardware profile the only available option is Profile 1 which boots Windows XP. So unfortunately I cannot use Haiku just yet.

Would you know if there a setting I can change in windows XP to allow the Haiku Boot Loader Screen to be displayed?

Cheers!

Magnus

UPDATE: Well I have made some small progress. When I pressed SHIFT during booting I could access the Boot loader. (I found out about this from the User guide) I disabled the options you described and instead of going to the grey screen for debugging I get back to the Haiku boot screen and the icons start to lit up, but that´s unfortunately it. Haiku never starts.

I wonder if there is an option or configuration in BIOS or in Windows I should change?

I understand that Haiku is in Alpha and may not yet be ideal for a not so sophisticated computer user as myself. Nevertheless I am drawn to this OS as I hope to give my tired old laptop a few extra years of use, and if everything works out well, turn my computer into a 100% Haiku machine in the end.

Hello again,

you are welcome! I am glad to help others with problems, whenever I can.

Concerning the boot procedure, if you manage to go past all the icons during boot but the boot itself hangs, try to do this in addition:

in the Boot Loader screen locate the fail-safe or safe video (or similar) and select the video safe options (VGA for example), then proceed with the boot (maybe, keeping the other disabled options that you used in the first boot) - the problem that Haiku hangs is probably due to video driver problems.

If you manage to select a video safe option (like VGA for example) you probably can boot (with low resolution). From there you can try then to adjust the screen resolution/colors and so on from Haiku.

I am sorry I cannot give more precise indications right now because I don’t have Haiku running in my PC now.

Hope it helps, and keep me (us) informed.

Best regards

Roberto B.

Hi Roberto

Thanks again for the advice. Unfortunately it didn´t work with the changed settings. I´ll try Haiku with my brother´s old laptop over christmas instead.

Cheers!

Magnus

Only lately did I get the problem of all icons lighting up and then just hanging.

After testing the diffirent nightly I found rev43512 boots fine. Please give that version a try.