Today ROS runs! Much joy!!

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Reziac
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:35 am

Today ROS runs! Much joy!!

Post by Reziac »

[left old message for history]

Howdy -- over the years I've tried several versions on various hardware and have never gotten any to fully boot or install (usually both versions hang at the same point). But I love the concept, so I keep trying. :)

I've stopped wasting CDs and am using Easy2Boot ( http://www.easy2boot.com/ ) to boot the ISO off a USB stick. This actually got way further than any previous attempt!

Anyway, here's today's experiment with ReactOS-0.4.3-live.iso -- hardware listing (from CPU-Z) and screenshots for two different machines:

http://www.doomgold.com/temp/ReactOS.zip

The AMD locked up solid when it came to the error prompt. The Dell responded to "bt" and spit up a bunch of stuff.

Today both are barebones, with no hard disk. They both run random linux and Windows off USB with no trouble.
Last edited by Reziac on Thu Feb 16, 2017 4:20 am, edited 3 times in total.
Reziac
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:35 am

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by Reziac »

PS Some edit controls are not visible with site colors off!
reactosfan34
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 10:00 pm

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by reactosfan34 »

Sadly USB booting is basically a no-go currently. Personally I use a single CD+R which means you can reuse the CD multiple times. Also when I say USB booting doesn't work, that involves other USB devices. You can't use a USB external CD drive either. I would also unplug any unnecessary USB devices and if possible use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse instead (at least while installing, you can always test it afterwards). If your computer has a built in CD drive and it hasn't worked to install, it could just be a hardware compatibility issue. I've been able to install on 2 of my devices. Each were made originally for XP.

The good news though is that a lot of work on USB was done this summer from Google Summer of Code. This code hasn't been implemented yet but the goal supposedly is to get USB booting working by the end of 2016. Even if the goal isn't reached by then it means it is being worked on. Once USB booting works it will allow people to try installing on devices that don't have a built in CD drive.

If you really want to test out ReactOS, you can run it in a virtual machine. I've used VMware in the past to test things quickly.
milon
Posts: 969
Joined: Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:26 pm

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by milon »

I'm not personally familiar with Easy2Boot, but I believe it boots its own core USB driver and then begins reading from the USB drive as if it were a HDD (or maybe an optical drive - the website didn't play nice for me, so I didn't invest much time on it). The whole point is to make USB booting where it otherwise wouldn't work. In theory, that should work on ReactOS too.

Having said that, there's still a lot of hardware (and hardware controllers) that aren't supported yet. I haven't done much hardware testing lately because I no longer have a spare test machine, but I never got it to successfully boot on mine either. I do mostly VirtualBox testing for now, but someday ReactOS will be my main OS. :D
Reziac
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:35 am

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by Reziac »

Apparently ReactOS used to work with Easy2Boot, but doesn't now:
http://www.easy2boot.com/add-payload-fi ... oad-files/
(search for it; it's a long list)
I had not bothered to unpack the ISO because it was already more successful than from CD! at least from USB it gets far enough along to produce some sort of error message, which was progress. But this makes me wonder if I should try unpacking the ISO to the HD and try running setup from there. (Old trick for old PCs that can't boot from a Windows CD.)

Anyway, will look forward to a USB-bootable version, and surely someday someone will tweak it into a USB-portable version (it's been done for XP and Win7 already). When I get the 'new' frankenputer finished up, I'll try the VM thing too.

All my hardware is XP or at most Vista era, so shouldn't be a problem with compatibility. When I've tried booting from CD, React gets about halfway through the initial "loading" crawl then stalls there forever. The USB attempt got quite a bit further.

Easy2Boot is well-named, give it a try. It's basically Rufus with all the work done for you. Let it run its setup on a flash drive, then copy ISOs to the specified folders -- unless you need to do something weird, that's all there is to it. (Don't use Fastload menu. It can get confused, and doesn't go any faster. Anything without a specified folder, put in \WIN, which does nothing but load it.)
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dizt3mp3r
Posts: 1874
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 5:54 pm

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by dizt3mp3r »

gotten... gggrrrrRRR (an Englishman snarls),

I suggest, "Have never been able to boot Reactos. Not even today!"

gotten... aaaggg!

-oOo-

Do not expect your particular hardware to boot, not just yet. Lower your expectations and you will not be disappointed. Test ReactOS in a VM only - if you wish to boot successfully. ReactOS is heavily under development and tweaking/tuning for specific configurations may well be done in a year or two but not now.

IF you post your configuration here in full and you are lucky (in that someone else has successfully booted the very same configuration) then you might obtain some useful assistance.
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
justincase
Posts: 441
Joined: Sat Nov 15, 2008 4:13 pm

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by justincase »

I disagree on the point about only testing in a VM. Testing with real hardware is good too if you have a machine you can set up for testing, but it's important to have a serial port (which should appear as COM1 to ReactOS and/or any Windows OS running on the machine), and some method of capturing serial output so that when (unfortunately this is not an "if" yet) you run into a problem, you can post meaningful debug logs on JIRA, which can be useful in making ReactOS run on your particular hardware, and subsequently to help improve ReactOS in other ways.

Re: "gotten" agreed. Ugh!
I reserve the right to ignore any portion of any post if I deem it not constructive or likely to cause the discussion to degenerate.
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dizt3mp3r
Posts: 1874
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 5:54 pm

Re: Have never gotten ReactOS to boot. Not today either!

Post by dizt3mp3r »

When used in President's speeches - it is even worse. :)

Re: The VM. For so many, the first experience of ReactOS is failure. A VM installation is the only sure-fire method of assuring that ReactOS will not frustrate the naiive or first time user that does not read the instructions. Many, if not most hardware installations are doomed to failure (in my admittedly limited experience) and I prefer to redirect first-time users to the more reliable approach until ROS becomes more stable on real hardware.

If you listen to the tone of most recent installer's first posts you will find the majority of them are expecting ReactOS to work out of the box and specifically on their box. They WILL be disappointed.

Bigly. :)
Skillset: VMS,DOS,Windows Sysadmin from 1985, fault-tolerance, VaxCluster, Alpha,Sparc. DCL,QB,VBDOS- VB6,.NET, PHP,NODE.JS, Graphic Design, Project Manager, CMS, Quad Electronics. classic cars & m'bikes. Artist in water & oils. Historian.
Reziac
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 7:35 am

Re: Today ROS runs! Much joy!!

Post by Reziac »

Today we tried
ReactOS-0.4.4-FOSDEM2017RC-Hybrid.iso
and broke down and burned a CD (fingers crossed it's not a waste)..

O frabjous day! IT RUNS!! For the first time ever!! :mrgreen:

First attempt: :Live in RAM
Motherboard: Dell Foxcon DG33M04 (started life in a Dell Inspiron 508) BIOS rev. 1.0.7
CPU: Intel quad Q8300 2.5GHz
video: VisionTek GeForce 5450
8GB RAM

Didn't realise USB support was spotty and that mobo has no PS/2 ports. Mouse didn't work at all, but keyboard mostly worked. Everything I could conveniently get at with the keyboard seemed to work, tho tab didn't go everywhere it should (might not be in ROS yet, dunno) and Alt-F4 sometimes didn't take til the 2nd attempt. Still, this was encouraging. Ran very slick for everything I tried.

Second attempt: Install to HD
Motherboard: Asus M2N68-AM Plus BIOS rev. 1103
CPU: AMD dual core 4850e 2.5GHz
2GB RAM of which 256mb goes to onboard video

It threw back a SATA HD, so tried a 40GB IDE and it ID'd the existing partitions. Let it reformat and install on the first one, and all went very fast (probably two minutes from start to desktop). While I haven't asked much of it yet, so far it's running fine.

It didn't install drivers for some of the PCI stuff nor sound nor onboard NIC. I did get it to install a driver for a USB wireless NIC (MediaTek with a Ralink chip) -- the Found New Hardware wizard failed, but Device Manager worked, and claims the device is working -- tho am now at a loss for how to connect to my router. (Me not network maven. Use small words.)

The only thing that's being goofy is that if I move a window, or display text, it sort of wobbles across the screen, which probably means the onboard video isn't real happy with it and I should try to install the correct driver. Otherwise it's slick as can be.

Using 126mb RAM to admire its navel, so comparable to TinyXP (which I use on my old laptop that has limited RAM). 12 seconds from boot to desktop.

Application Manager interface is nice. Combines all the good ideas from old Add/Remove Programs and the various linux package managers.

Found a number of small things that don't work (or don't stick) because they don't appear to be coded yet, and managed to crash the folder pane in File Explorer (tried to quickly trawl thru the registry, oops), but otherwise -- I'm impressed. Seems to be somewhere between Win98 and XP for total functionality. I didn't retire Win98 til 4 years ago, and by choice use XP and XP64 for everyday, so ROS is coming right up my alley. So glad it's here!
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