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Topic: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

I have an EEE PC 1000h (80GB) which originally had Windows XP on it. I install Linux Xandros (for the EEE) which wiped the Windows installation, and I now plan to install Windows XP as a partition although I'm having problems with GParted.

It's worked fine on my Lenovo laptop, but it's giving me a no screens found error when booting on my EEE. I'm really worried, as I need to partition the drive and I sortof know how to use GParted.

I believe the version of GParted is "0.3.4-10 beta".

Does anyone know how I could fix this? Thanks in advance!

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

This version it too old. Please use one of the latest versions.
(Topic moved to the live media section).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

So a newer version will work on the EEE PC? Thanks for moving the thread.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Newer versions usually solve previous problems.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

What's the latest version I can get, the ISO would be better - i'd just burn it to CD/DVD. The only one I can find which offers an ISO is the live version 0.3.7.7. Would this be ok? I know there is 3.8 now.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

jackdelamare wrote:

What's the latest version I can get, the ISO would be better - i'd just burn it to CD/DVD. The only one I can find which offers an ISO is the live version 0.3.7.7. Would this be ok? I know there is 3.8 now.

The "stable" LiveCD/LiveUSB (which is 0.3.7-7) can be found here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile … _id=271779
For the "testing" live media (the latest version there is 0.3.9-1) see http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile … _id=269898

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k219/jackdelamare/GParted-EEEPC.jpg

This is what I get. I want to resize the main hard drive (80GB) which current has Linux Xandros on, down to 30GB and then make one 50GB which I'd later split into a 30GB and a 20GB (for Windows XP and Ubuntu). But I'd probably just make the 50GB first to make sure it all works correctly.

I'm stuck though, as there are small drives there. Should I just make the middle one smaller, down to 30GB and it'll work?

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi,
the first step, you should do, is to backup all important data to prevent any loss. The second consideration should be about partitioning : there are only four primary partitions available, and you already use all four. Win XP might need a bootable primary partition, if not started by a Linux bootloader. Linux does not care about being booted in an extended partition, which you need, if more than four volumes are intended.

I would try to convert sda3 and sda4 to "unallocated space" (deleting the two small partitions) and thus gaining two primary partitions for your purposes. I assume, sda1 is the swap partition of Linux Xandros.

Next steps are :
1. Shrink sda2 to 30 GB (from the rear end)
2. Create a new partition sda3 with 30 GB (just behind sda2; for Win XP)
3. Create a new partition sda4 with 20 GB (just behind sda3 for Ubuntu; perhaps you can use sda1 as its swap partition as well. Be aware, that your harddisk's heads then have to permanently make big jumps over the Xandros and Win XP partition; perhaps you modify the sequence therefore.)

Good luck
cmdr

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

So basically just delete sda3 and sda4? I am unsure what they do. Perhaps they had XP files on as XP was pre-installed but it got wiped when I installed Xandros. I just want to be sure I don't mess up my EEE too much.

So make sda3 and sda4 unallocated (meaning they'd still be there but be dead) and then do the shrinking to what I want?

10 (edited by stormhead 2008-09-15 23:11:19)

Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

cmdr wrote:

I assume, sda1 is the swap partition of Linux Xandros.

It definitiely is not - as you can  see in the screen shot above, sda1 carries a file system (ext2), which is rather untypical for a swap partition.
However, since sda1 is really well-filled, it may make sense to shrink sda2 a bit "from the beginning" (so a chunk of unallocated space is created between sda1 and sda2), and then in turn grow sda1 by that amount of space. Please note that this operation can easily take a long time (several hours are not so uncommon!) to complete!

2. Create a new partition sda3 with 30 GB (just behind sda2; for Win XP)

If you want to speed things up a bit, you can just create this partition as "unformetted" - so GParted won't waste time in creating a file system ion this partition.
The reason for this: If you want to install XP, you best inxstall it into an NTFS formatted partition - and experience shows that a NTFS file system created by GParted needs a chkdsk run under Windows rto be accepted as "clean". Unfortunately, the Windows setup will typically not be able to run chkdsk, so you best format this partition from inside the XP setup - which makes formatting it beforehand in GParted rather senseless.

3. Create a new partition sda4 with 20 GB (just behind sda3 for Ubuntu; perhaps you can use sda1 as its swap partition as well. Be aware, that your harddisk's heads then have to permanently make big jumps over the Xandros and Win XP partition; perhaps you modify the sequence therefore.)

As I wrote before: sda1 is definitely not a swap partition - so it might become necessary to create one. You would need onr partition for Ubuntu's root file system and one swap partition - and since you already have three primary partirtions on your drive (sda1...3), you can set up two additional partitioons only if you
1. First create an extended partition in the free space behind sda3 (this extended partition will be named "sda4" then);
2. create logical partitions inside the extended partition (naming starts from sda5 here) - the extended partition can be thought of as a container that can be divided into a (theoretically) unlimited number of logical partitions. However, in practice, Linux can't address more than 59 logical partitons on IDE drives (64 minor device numbers per IDE hard drive; one identifies the drive itself, four identity the MBR partition table entries - which leaves 59 for the logical partitions) - and no more than 11 (16 minor device numbers per drive) on SCSI disks (and since SATA drives are accessed using the SCSI layer inside the kernel, this eleven-partition-limitation may count for them, too).

jackdelamare wrote:

So basically just delete sda3 and sda4? I am unsure what they do.

That's the point: If youÄre unsure, you better frst find out. Maybe you find some information on the factory partitoning of the EEE on the internet, so you can figure out if they gold any useful/valuable data or if they are jzst junk.

So make sda3 and sda4 unallocated (meaning they'd still be there but be dead) and then do the shrinking to what I want?

In principle, yes.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Ok. I want to do this step by step with you guys to make sure I don't screw up. There is nothing that I could loose on there (nothing important) so if it fails I could just re-install Xandros right?

Firstly, I will shrink sda2 from the left side first, creating unallocated space. This won't destroy data on there, will it? I will then enlarge sda1 over the unallocated space. I ask again, nothing will get lost or damaged doing this, right?

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

I remind that any partitioning operation is potentially dangerous, so backup of important files is always recommanded. The simplest reason is the always existing probability for any hardware failure.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Will the following work?

Looking at my image above, there is a large section which is evidently the main hard drive. So if I shrink that from the right side, it'll create unallocated space, which I can then install XP into right? Before installing XP though, I should disable the primary drive (?) so to not ruin Xandros? Please help.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi!

GParted can't shrink your hard drive (some hard drive vendors offer tools that can sdo this - but why sould one shrink the usable space on a hard drive, throwing away drive capacity that was paid for?), it can only manipulate the partitions on it.
You can indeed shring your large partition from the right and thus create  free space behind this partition - but son can not install XP into this free space as long as the two small partitions on the very right are present. The reason for this is the limited number of partitions (4) the MBR partition table can hold - all partitions you see right now are primary partitions, defined by tghe MBR partition table, so this table is full!
So you must free up one MBR partition table entry before installing XP - and this can be done only by deleting a partition.

XP won't damage your Xandros installation during its own setup process - simply because it does not understand the partition ID and file system used by Xandros. However, it will very likely fill the MBR with iots own boot code, so you'll lose your current GRUB oer LILO boot loader; as a result, you'll have to repair your Linux boot loader (and configure it to also chainload XP) beforte you can use Xandros again.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

I see. Well I read this tutorial on restoring the bootloader - http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_linu … _first.htm - but thing is I'm not using Ubuntu, so how would I get to it?

So, I need to delete one of those partitions at the end of my hard drive? The small unallocated one?

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi!

jackdelamare wrote:

I see. Well I read this tutorial on restoring the bootloader - http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_linu … _first.htm - but thing is I'm not using Ubuntu, so how would I get to it?

I donÄt know Yandros (I'm a Debian guy), but since almost all Linux distros seem to use GRUB 0.97 as their boot loader, and since the procedure of restoring the boot loader depends mainly - 9on the boot loader itself, I would expect that you can get along as described in the tutorial. Only thing is that the integrastion of the boot loader into your GUI menu structure and graphical configuration tools can differ (such tools tendo be somewhat distro-specific), so you might need to experiment a bit (or leave the GUI behind and do the job on the shell).
For the last step (restoring GRUB), any live system should work, provided it contains the files required to set up GRUB on a hard drive, so you could even use Ubuntu for re-installing GRUB (if you want to be very sure everything is right, you can re-install the GRUB once again after bootign Xandros; in this case, use you distro's package manager to fetch and re-install the GRUB package, so you have all the right files (belonging to your distro) in the right place, and then use the commands as specified in part 5 of the tutorial again to ensure these files are used to boot your system - instead of something Ubuntu might have left behind).

So, I need to delete one of those partitions at the end of my hard drive? The small unallocated one?

Yes, you'll have to delete one - otherwise you won't be able to create a partiton as an installation target for XP.
Oh, by the way: These partitions may look a bit "unused", but they're definitely not "unallocated"! A partition never consists of unallocated disk space: A chunk of disk space is either unallocated, or it is assigned to a partition.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Ok, thank you for the help. I'm going to go ahead and do this in a few days as I currently have little time.

1) Delete unused (sorry tongue) partition.
2) Shrink big partition from right side, to 40GB, leaving unallocated space.
3) Run Windows XP setup - when I attempted to do so beforehand (to test it), it said something about failing to load. I'm wondering if this would be a problem or if it was just because there we already 4 partitions or something?

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi!

jackdelamare wrote:

3) Run Windows XP setup - when I attempted to do so beforehand (to test it), it said something about failing to load. I'm wondering if this would be a problem or if it was just because there we already 4 partitions or something?

Could be that it complained about the already full partition table - but you'll only find out for sure when running the Windows setup again.
If it fails again, please write down (or take a photo of) the errotr message(s) and post them here - maybe we can find the source of your problems then.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Ok thanks for the help. So the steps above that are correct, and I'm going to do them now. Oh and I'm going to install Ubuntu on an SDHC card so no worries with creating space for it. I know it would be more difficult anyway.

I'm going to go ahead and do this now.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Ok I deleted one of the small unused space at the end of the HD, which went through ok. I then made the large one smaller by half, which also worked perfectly. I am booted into Xandros now and everything is as it should be, which is great.

Now I need to install Windows XP on the spare partition BUT you said GParted only allows 4 partitions? I have 5:
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k219/jackdelamare/25092008143.jpg
This just happened, I didn't make the small one on the left hmm.

Also, I'm thinking now that maybe I should make space for Ubuntu? Do you think it's wise - or should I install it (or buy it read made) on an SDHC card. I don't mind doing either, but you'll know better than me if it'll be a harder job.

Thanks.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi!

You don't have five partitions - you have three partitions with two chunks of unallocated space (= space that does not belong to a partition) in between. And it's not GParted that allows only four partitions - this limitation is caused by the size and structure of your hard drive's MBR.

The small one on the left can well have "just happened" during resizing the Xandros partition: By definitoon, a partition always startd and ends at a cylinder boundary. However, not all partitioning tools take care of this, and if GParted resizes/moves a partition, it by default tries to fit its beginning or end to a cylinder boundary. Since in the typical "logical" geometry of a modern hard dribe a cylinder is about 8 MByte in size (64 sectors * 255 heads * 512 bytes) and the first chunk of free space is just a little bit smaller than this, I assume that you second partition didn't originally start at a cylinder boundary; as a result of this, its beginning was moved topwards the end of the disk to the next cylinder boundary.
If you worry about these < 8 MBytes of free space, you should enlarge the first partition, so it directlly borders the second partition; however, compated to tzhe size of a modern hard drivem these few MBytes may not be worth the work.

Finally, the XP setup should be happy with this drivbe layout - and happily install into the second chunk of free space.
If you want to install Ubuntu in addition to this, you will also have to delete the second "unknown" partition (sda4). Then you can start instzalling Ububtu; during the Ubuntu setup you should be able to choose whether you want to install Ubuntu into a primary or a logical partirtion. I recommend chosing the logical partition since this choice "weakens" the partition number limit: In this case, an "extended" partition will be created (the fourth partition defined by your MBR); this extended partition serves a a container for several "logical" partitions. Thus, by using a logical partition, you get some flexibility for adding new partitions later (maybe you want a FAT32 partition as a common storage space for Ubuntu, Xandros and Windows...).
You'll likely have to manage your boot loader configuration manually when adding another Linux distro since one distro usually does not update its boot loader configuration if you change the kernel on the second distro - but this should be the only problem you'll encounter in operation.

22 (edited by jackdelamare 2008-09-26 17:00:15)

Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Ok, I'm going to sort some partitions out, making the XP one smaller for Ubuntu. Actually, I could do that at a later date and just install XP for now, right? I'm going to do it now, so wish me luck tongue.

EDIT: This is the error I get.
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k219/jackdelamare/26092008145.jpg

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi,

have a look at this.

How did you install Win XP (SP ?)? Original CD (unscratched ?), Sys Prep image or else ? Did you unplug a device during setup procedure (USB device, PCMCIA device or else), deactivate/change anything in BIOS Setup during setup boot sequences ?

Is "pci.sys" ( Path: "<windir>/system32/drivers") damaged ? Try to overwrite it under Linux with a working version.

24 (edited by jackdelamare 2008-09-26 22:46:42)

Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

It's a Windows XP service pack 2 disk. It's the only copy I have and it's brand new, it was un opened. I didn't unplug anything hmm.

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Re: Fatal server error: no screens found - EEE PC 1000h

Hi!

Blue Screens are usually caused by bad hardware and/or malfunctioning device drivers. You should thus first check your hardware for errors (using memtest86 or memtest86+ for your RAM - a single reported error is one too much! - and the diagnostic tool provided by the manufacturer of your hard drive; use Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test or Seagate's SeaTools for DOS if your manuzfacturer does not offer such a tool).