I have Mageia installed in my machine (from Free DVD 64-bit) from day 1. Successfully, with no problems, the fastest installation ever (no more than 15-16 minutes).
I'm a happy user, but I want to be able to boot from Live CD or install Mageia from it. It's important for me.
I have already read the various topics in the forum (also from other forums), about that kind of problem, but I can't find a solution.
So, following the various suggestions I came across, I've done -already- the following:
I downloaded various Mageia ISOs.
Mageia Live CD Gnome Europa 1, 3 times (2 from direct link, 1 via torrent).
Mageia Live CD Gnome Europa 2 (from direct link).
Mageia Live CD KDE Europa 1 (2 times, from direct link & torrent).
I've double-checked the sums (md5 & sha1) for all the downloaded images, they were correct.
I've burned the ISOs, with the lowest possible speed (4x).
One ISO was burned with brasero. Another one with AcetoneISO.
All the others with k3b, from various installations (Mandriva 2010.2, Mageia 1, Mageia Cauldron, PCLOS 2011.06), just to ensure that k3b worked OK (I knew that it was OK, but that's the correct procedure).
I verified every written image with k3b. All of them were correct. I burned only CD discs that I've used many times in the past and never gave me errors (Taiyo Yuden, TDK, Philips).
I couldn't boot (or install) Mageia with any of the cds.
My DVD drive it's OK. Many distros are installed the last year, about 15 only the last 6 months.
To be sure that there is no "sudden" problem with the dvd drive, I've installed PCLOS 2011.06 (again, after the problem I'm describing) and an Ubuntu variant.
I also booted various Live CDs & DVDs I had, even a multi-boot DVD with 5 distros. I had no problem with any of these distributions. But with Mageia... No luck.
Then copied 2 of the downloaded images in the usb memory I always use for installations or for live-boot. I used the 3 methods I know: the dd command, mandriva-seed & unetbootin. But... no joy.
In the Live CDs I've burned & the images I've put in the usb flash memory, I used various kernel boot commands, like: SAFE SETTINGS, NO ACPI, NO LOCAL APIC (hitting F4 in boot screen), noacpi, acpi=0,
acpi=off, acpi=no, noapic, nolapic, noirqbalance, irqpoll, irqfixup, splash=verbose, rdblacklist=nouveau, nouveau.modeset=0, nvidia.modeset=0, ide=nodma, nomodeset, and some other I can't remember now.
Some of them in combination with another one or more.
I know, some of these commands may be wrong or inappropriate for the problem, but I'm not an experienced user (just an average newbie) and I was just trying to fix the problem myself.
Other info:
1. After the screen with the three boot options, whatever I select (boot or install), I just see the boot-splash (I think that's the name), with the line of dots that show the progress of the "booting procedure".
It takes tooooo long to reach the last dot (about 10 minutes, maybe more) and nothing happens. After that, I waited (a couple of times up to 20-30 minutes) for something to happen... with no avail.
It's was always repeatable.
2. During that "boot progress", in the 2nd or 3rd dot (if I remember correctly) the message "Press Esc for verbose mode" should appear. That kind of message, or any other message, never appeared (every time).
3. If I hit Esc (to go to verbose mode) I get a black screen, with a blinking cursor on the upper left corner.
If I hit again Esc, I get this message: could not start boot splash: No such file or directory.
Then, every time I hit Esc, again the same message.
4. When trying to boot with the Live-CD and wrote splash=verbose in kernel boot parameters, to see any useful messages, I get this:
(I managed only to take a shot of the last messages, all the other are to fast to capture)
Where I placed the red arrow in the image, is where it stops for several seconds, then the next lines come up.
5. I googled for the messages in the screen (below the red arrow), like:
"could not start boot splash: No such file or directory"
"bio too big device logo0 (2 > 0)"
"SQUASHFS error: squashfs_read_data failed to read block 0x0"
I couldn't find anything useful, that I haven't tried already.
6. When trying to boot with the ISO in a usb memory and I enter the splash=verbose kernel boot parameter, I get this:
7. Some of the times, that I tried booting with the usb (using splash=verbose boot option) I left it plugged in more time than usual,
just to see if there would be more messages than the previous photos. This message appears, although I don't remember if I pressed also any keys (like Ctrl+Alt+F3):
Hardware (but it's very hard to believe there is a problem with it):
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-M720-US3 (rev. 1.0) BIOS version F2 (updated 2-3 months ago)
4 GB RAM (DDR2 800)
CPU AMD Phenom 8650 (X3)
Graphics Card XFX nvidia7900GS 256MB (PCI Express)
SATA Hard Drives
IDE DVD-drive
Internet Connection: levelone WUA-0603 (H/W version 2.0) usb wireless.
Yes, I tried to boot with or without the usb wireless card, so most probably it's not the problem.
I can't think of any other information to give. If you think of something, ask me.
I downloaded the "Kernel Boot Command-Line Parameter Reference" from kernel.org and I'm willing to try every command in it, if you think that somewhere in these pages is the solution.
Does anyone has an idea, a workaround, a specific combination of boot parameters... or anything, so I can boot from a Mageia Live-cd & install it?
Thanks in advance
PS. Sorry for the long post, but I don't want you to waste your time in answers that I've already tested.
Sorry, my conscience seems to have skipped over your post, although i read it.