I posted here about four months ago with problems getting Haiku to run smoothly on an old laptop. Well, I’ve acquired a new laptop since then (as well as a new work laptop) and tested Haiku on it last night. Running from the CD was slick, fast, and fun. I could connect to the internet right away (no setup), I could scroll using two fingers on the track pad, and everything seemed fine.
I decided to install it on the main Windows partition, since my work computer is the only place I need Windows anymore. The BE File System initialization and Haiku install finished without a hiccup. But when I restarted, the computer still tried to boot into Windows and thought something was wrong with the file system. I rebooted and got into Haiku using the CD, and it started fine, but I could no longer connect to the internet or use two-finger scrolling on the track pad. At the end of the night, I let Windows do a recovery (since I luckily left that partition alone), so now it’s sitting there with a blank slate, waiting to do this right.
I can navigate around a computer pretty well, but a lot of this is over my head. I don’t know where I went wrong.
Was I supposed to format the main partition first? Honestly, I thought the BE initializer or Haiku installer would do that for me.
How does the computer decide which partition to boot from? I was obviously mistaken to think it would boot from the primary partition.
Why wasn’t the WiFi working anymore, or the track pad?
Use DriveSetup to initialize the partition to BFS.
Not working track pad and WiFi could be an IRQ issue. Hard to say. When you installed Haiku, the IRQs might have started sharing causing conflict?
Boot CD -> DriveSetup -> initialize partition to BFS -> Installer
If you are using the entire drive then you don’t require a boot manager. If this is a partition on the drive, then you should, mount your partition (Haiku1) and from terminal type makebootable /Haiku1 and then bootman. Do ls -l / to see what the partition was mounted as (I assume Haiku1).
http://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/installation-guide
Edit:
fixed bootman & makebootable in post
Well, at first, it sounds like it’s a problem with the bootloader not being written properly. Haiku’s partition manager is a bit of a way from being complete. It may be an idea to just keep Haiku on a second partition, and leave Windows in tact for now. To do this, you’ll need a boot manager. I would recommend GRUB, as it can hide non-Windows partitions from Microsoft. Don’t try and download it, as it’s a bit of a nightmare. I’ll give you some more instructions if you can answer me these questions:
- Does your laptop have a floppy drive?
- Do you know how to use dd or rawrite?
Sorry if I’m talking to you like a baby or going too fast for you. Also, apologies for having not the slightest idea why the wifi and mouse aren’t working.
No don’t worry, I need to be talked through this. My laptop doesn’t have a floppy drive, and I’ve never used dd or rawrite. I feel like those aren’t the answers you were looking for, heh.
I’ve always wanted to get GRUB on my system for something like this, but you’re right - last time I looked up directions, I was baffled and chose not to go through with it for fear of destroying my (then) only computer.
I think I have a solution. Well, I actually have two. Firstly, I’d like to ask you to use some application on Windows to backup your entire hard drive. If you don’t have any software for this, I could give you a few pointers. Secondly, the process of installing grub can be done either on the Haiku boot CD, or on Windows. Your choice. I would, for the first time ever :p, recommend using Windows, as it’s a useful thing to have anyway, I have found it to be a bit slow on Haiku, for some reason. So, once you’ve backed-up , download this:
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
In the meantime, I’ll do a bit of reading. By the Way, I’ll be doing the same thing as you are for my own PC, but with the floppy.