PXE boot to Black Screen

[zhackwyatt]

Hello!

I am attempting to PXE boot SpinRite 6.1 on an old Dell Latitude 6430. When I do, I get the splash screen and then just a black screen. From reading the forum it seems that this may be a FreeDos issue?

What I don't understand, is that PXE booting SpinRite 6.0 works just fine on the same hardware.

Any suggestions?

 

[DanR]

Any suggestions?

Yes! The problem is not FreeDos. It is the video subsystem in that PC. SpinRite launching switches the video system from test mode to graphic mode to display the cosmetic SpinRite 6.1 Splash screen for a few seconds, and then back to text mode. The video system is NOT happy with that switching.

The fix is simple! Just edit Config.SYS (it is a small simple text file). Locate the line with SPLASH in it. Either add "Rem " (without the quotes) at the beginning of the line to remark it out. Or simply delete it. Then save the file and reboot. SpinRite 6.1 will now run without further ado.

 

[zhackwyatt]

Yes! The problem is not FreeDos. It is the video subsystem in that PC. SpinRite launching switches the video system from test mode to graphic mode to display the cosmetic Splash screen for a few seconds, and then back to text mode. The video system is NOT happy with that switching.

The fix is simple! Just edit Config.SYS (it is a small simple text file). Locate the line with SPLASH in it. Either add "Rem " (without the quotes) at the beginning of the line to remark it out. Or simply delete it. Then save the file and reboot. SpinRite 6.1 will now run without further ado.

Thanks! I am farther. Now I am stuck on "Scanning for and initializing disks...".


For other folks, I did the following on Linux:

mount -o loop /mnt /tmp/SpinRite61.img
vi /mnt/CONFIG.SYS
umount /mnt

PXE Menu looks like:

label SpinRite 6.1
    linux memdisk
    initrd SpinRite61.img
    append raw

 

[peterblaise]

Try command line options, such as:

SPINRITE NORAMTEST SKIPVERIFY

SPINRITE VIDEO GRAPHICS NORAMTEST SKIPVERIFY

More command line options at
https://gitlab.com/GRC-Community/spinrite-6.1-wiki/-/wikis/Command-Line
... a terrific resource collection gathered by our own @ColbyBouma

 

[zhackwyatt]

Try command line options, such as:

SPINRITE NORAMTEST SKIPVERIFY

SPINRITE VIDEO GRAPHICS NORAMTEST SKIPVERIFY

More command line options at
https://gitlab.com/GRC-Community/spinrite-6.1-wiki/-/wikis/Command-Line
... a terrific resource collection gathered by our own @ColbyBouma

Looks like something is more systemic.

None of those options will get me into SpinRite. I did finally burn the ISO to a DVD, (without any splash screen modifications) and it works perfectly fine on the computers.

The DVD seems to work on a Dell 755, 6430, and 5040. With PXE, they all get blocked at the same spot.

 

[peterblaise]

SPINRITE ROCFG

?

 

[zhackwyatt]

SPINRITE ROCFG

?

Yeah I tried that one too.

 

[AlanD]

Looks like something is more systemic.

None of those options will get me into SpinRite. I did finally burn the ISO to a DVD, (without any splash screen modifications) and it works perfectly fine on the computers.

The DVD seems to work on a Dell 755, 6430, and 5040. With PXE, they all get blocked at the same spot.

I wonder if PXE is booting UEFI rather than BIOS? That would stop SR running.

 

[PHolder]

PXE does a number of things that SpinRite can trip over. It uses some of lower conventional memory, and SpinRite is already kinda snug. It likely wedges into INT 13 and SpinRite is going to thus see things it probably wasn't expecting and just can't deal with. The PXE boot loader also probably unloads itself after SpinRite is started, and that will likely upset SpinRite's understanding of the system configuration.

Perhaps you could try and focus on getting a working FreeDOS environment running from PXE and then manually launch SpinRite in that environment, and see if it's any more successful.

 

[zhackwyatt]

PXE does a number of things that SpinRite can trip over. It uses some of lower conventional memory, and SpinRite is already kinda snug. It likely wedges into INT 13 and SpinRite is going to thus see things it probably wasn't expecting and just can't deal with. The PXE boot loader also probably unloads itself after SpinRite is started, and that will likely upset SpinRite's understanding of the system configuration.

Perhaps you could try and focus on getting a working FreeDOS environment running from PXE and then manually launch SpinRite in that environment, and see if it's any more successful.

Must be, I will continue to play with it. Hopefully v7 works with PXE native, it's super useful to have.