No boot & no WiFi after install

[oldsalt]

Hope someone can help. I installed Point a couple weeks ago on an HP Pavilion G6 with Windows 8. When I booted to the live dvd I got the message (startpar service(s) returned failure: plymouth. Once the dvd was up & running I had no internet so plugged in the cat5. I did the install, made a USB boot stick in case I needed it then did a reboot. Booted right to Windows 8. Tried booting again, same. So put the boot stick in and did another boot and it booted to grub. I installed grub on /dev/sda, I had 2 choices, /dev/sda and /dev/sda1. I tried both and got the same results, no boot. I went to terminal and tried boot-fix which got me nowhere. I downloaded a couple boot repair programs with no luck. So I turned my attention to the WiFi problem, WiFi is a must for me. I bought the notebook because I can't do the desktop anymore. My notebook has a Ralink RT3290 802.11 BGN WiFi adapter so I installed the drivers for that. I am trying to connect to a NetGear N300 WNR2000v4 wireless router so I went to network connections and put in the info I knew of. Still no WiFi. I opened terminal and ran ( /sbin/ifconfig) and it showed no wlan0. I know it's there because I get wireless with Win8. ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Maroman]

as far as I understand there are two problems. nobody curies for long distance but maybe it helps.
first problem you have is not because of Point (any any Linux distro) but because of firmware you have, I guess. namely you have efi firmware. did you check if secure boot is switched off? Debian wheezy supports efi firmware (topology of disc is completely different, so standard grub has no place to install some of its elements) but not secure boot function.
the ideal situation is to switch to bios but I do not know if it's possible in situation you have win8. and maybe whorst, maybe you are not allowed to switch off secure boot. I read somewhere that there are problems with installing another system if win8 is preinstalled.

by the way.
the warning about plymouth at the moment is not important. if you switch off plymouth as a service warning disappears (of course instead graphic ending you see text of closing services).

second problem
I do not understand if you solve your problem with wifi card. I must say I'm also using Ralink chipset (Network controller: Ralink corp. RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI) and never ever have problems with it.

cheers,

[jordan]

My notebook has a Ralink RT3290 802.11 BGN WiFi adapter so I installed the drivers for that.

I know you said you installed the wireless drivers but I thought the following might help: http://askubuntu.com/questions/253632/how-do-i-get-a-ralink-rt3290-wireless-card-working

[Maroman]

jordan, very interesting advice. thx a lot . maybe it's solution (not exact but method used) for my problem. I have (168c:002b) Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01) - it works and doesn't, depends on kernel (hopefully works with Point).

[TNFrank]

I found this link to help me get firmware for a Debian 7.1 install that I just did on my #3 laptop. Maybe it'll help ya' out, maybe not but here it is.
http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/all/firmware-iwlwifi/download

[Maroman]

ok, but in Point all these drivers are installed by definition. there is problem that newer drivers do not support wifi cards and instead newer older one must be used. in my case I have no problem even with kernel 2.6 (Scientific or Centos) but I have with 3.8 and higher.

[oldsalt]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I will try these and see what happens. Let you know.

[oldsalt]

OK, I checked and secure boot is disabled. Still only boots from USB, otherwise boots straight to Win8.
As far as WiFi, none of those tips helped. I do appreciate your help, any other thoughts?
Concerning the boot problem, when I installed Point grub was installed on /dev/sda. I ran gparted and noticed the boot partition is /dev/sda3.
When installing the only options I had were sda and sda1. Is there a way to put grub on sda3 or does it matter?

[TNFrank]

I installed Gnome Disk Utility during "Live" boot to USB to use to partition the hard drive since I understand it better then gparted. That way I could totally format the entire hard drive(I know you want to keep Win 8 though so partition to your needs) and then did the install from a totally Ext4 partitioned hard drive.
I've always found that when I'm having trouble with something in Linux it's just because I've not found that little "tweak" or "fix" that I needed to get it working but once I do find it then it's a piece of cake from that point on. Just stick with it and I'm sure you'll get it figured out.

[oldsalt]

I plan on staying with it. I am new to Linux but I really like Point. I hope to drop Windows sometime in the future but not until I get used to Point.
Been playing with it quite a bit but a lot more to learn (such as terminal).