Start Plop from Vista boot menu-problems found

[Alex]

First of all greetings to Elmar,the man who does the job of lazy BIOS developers that do not update their products
Plop does what it says-I can add it to Vista boot menu and I start it from there. But this little program is very sensitive and it often shows the "xo" error on black screen. I figured out myself that this error is caused by a USB web camera that is connected to my laptop. When I unplug the device the problem is gone.
Another bug is this-if I plug a USB flash drive when I power on the laptop, when I select the Plop entry at boot menu the "xo" error appears again. I found that I have to enter in Plop and then I have to select USB so I can plug the USB drive. So when I plug the USB drive, after I enter in Plop program, all is OK
The point of this bug report is that the "xo" message is not very helpful for users. It doesn't describe what the problem is-maybe a message like "Please disconnect unsupported USB devices" will be more helpful I often forget to unplug the camera and then I wonder why Plop is not working
Elmar, maybe you could make the next version of Plop to ignore unsupported USB devices. So the program will not go nuts, when it detects unknown devices in the USB ports.

Anyway, thanks for this amazing free program!

[Elmar]

hi,

....program is very sensitive and it often shows the "xo" error on black screen.  I figured out myself that this error is caused by a USB web camera that is connected to my laptop. When I unplug the device the problem is gone.
Another bug is this-if I plug a USB flash drive when I power on the laptop, when I select the Plop entry at boot menu the "xo" error appears again.  I found that I have to enter in Plop and then I have to select USB so I can plug the USB drive. So when I plug the USB drive, after I enter in Plop program, all is OK
The point of this bug report is that the "xo" message is not very helpful for users. ...

the "xo" message comes from plpbtldr.bin and not from the boot manager. its a relict from the first plpgenbtldr program and is removed with the next release. it is a debug info for loading the boot manager to the ram.

you see "xo" because the boot manager restores the screen that you have when the boot manager starts. then the usb driver hangs and nobody clears the screen, so "xo" remains on the screen, but has nothing to do with usb.

It doesn't describe what the problem is-maybe a message like "Please disconnect unsupported USB devices" will be more helpful I often forget to unplug the camera and then I wonder why Plop is not working

there can be various reasons why the usb drive hangs. i have no idea why it hangs when the web cam is connected.

Elmar, maybe you could make the next version of Plop to ignore unsupported USB devices. So the program will not go nuts, when it detects unknown devices in the USB ports.

the boot manager skips unsupported devices since the first version. when it finds an unsupported device, then you get for example the message "port 3: no mass storage device" and the boot manager continues searching a mass storage device to boot it. hold the ctrl key and use usb boot. what messages do you see when the web cam is connected?

regards
elmar

[Alex]

I think I found where the problem is. I have made the Plop files (boot.ini and the plop folder) hidden in Winows Explorer and then the bootloader failed, so I had to reinstall it.
This time I decided to leave the file boot.ini and the Plop folder visible-now Plop is stable and it works.
So maybe the previous post I made is incorrect
Now Plop works and I get in the stars field all the time.But the web camera still creates problems. If I leave it in the USB port, this is what happens-I select USB from the menu, then the text "Scaning for mass storage devices" appears and the scan hangs. If I remove the camera the scan goes on normally. So for now I unplug the camera when I do usb booting.
I think the right question is: do I have to enter Plop menu FIRST and insert the boot media SECOND?
Or Plop allows me to plug the boot device BEFORE I even enter in the stars menu?

[Elmar]

the boot manager does nothing with usb until you use the usb option.

are you able to swap the port of the webcam and the usb drive that the boot manager finds the usb drive first?

regards
elmar

[Alex]

Elmar you're right, when I swaped the ports the USB drive is found first and it loads Linux,and the webcam is pluged in too. I guess this solves the problem
But I must ask again,what is the right way of using Plop-I plug the device and I enter Plop or I enter Plop and then I plug the device???
Maybe I do things in wrong order and this is creating problems for me.
Thanks for your rapid answers

[Elmar]

you did nothing wrong. normally, it doesn't matter when or where you plug in the usb device or when its already connected. some devices are making troubles because of the limited error/retry handling in my usb drivers. its only partial implemented to keep the drivers very small. your web cam is one of those devices that makes problems. there is no list of those devices. another way to avoid the hang with such devices is to connect them to a usb hub. usb hubs should make no problems. the boot manager does not support usb hubs. so the boot manager detects the usb hub as none storage device and skips it and all devices connected to the hub.