Hi All
That was weird... and I think I need to document it somewhere.
I had been using ArcaOS5.0.0 for a couple of hours when my son phoned and asked if I could put a bootable usb stick together with clonezilla -
http://www.clonezilla.org/ - on it. I downloaded tuxboot for windows (no, no os/2 version) -
https://tuxboot.org/ - as that looked to be the easiest way to create the required bootable usb stick, booted into windows7 and soon had the "bootable clonezilla" usb stick prepared and tested.
I then booted back into ArcaOS without any problems.
My son turned up about 3 hours later to collect the usb stick and asked if it was possible to create a bootable usb stick to install windowsxp from. I rebooted from ArcaOS into windows7 and we then downloaded and installed various software to help in the process and finally found something called Rufus -
https://rufus.akeo.ie/ - that did the job.
Having finished preparing usb sticks for son I rebooted into ArcaOS. Then son asked if he could have a copy of the windowsxp cd. I used the DVDTools Burn Disc Image to perform the copy. All went well until the cd had completed. The disc draw opened to eject the completed cd - and the system hung, no reaction to mouse or keyboard, clock stopped, no cpu movement.
I pressed the Reset button and rebooted ArcaOS but boot stopped shortly after ifx had slowly run - took a couple of minutes rather than the usual few seconds - and the system gave up trying to boot with pmshell.exe being the last line on screen and all disk activity having stopped. I left it for about 10 minutes with no change, Ctrl-Alt-Del did not work so I pressed the Reset button to reboot. ArcaOS gave up booting at the same point as previously.
I then tried booting eCS2.2b2 which stopped booting at the same place as ArcaOS ie with pmshell.exe being the last line onscreen; dmt (earlier version of ifx) had run slowly as well.
I also have eCS2.1 installed on this computer so tried that with identical results.
Windows7 still boots and runs fine of course - at least that proves it is not hardware failure.
After a phone call to a mate who works in system support I turned power off to the pc and removed the graphics card. I reinserted the graphics card around an hour later.
No change to any of the above: no OS/2 based system gets further then the pmshell.exe line, windows7 boots and runs fine.
I then tried booting from ArcaOS install dvd and thought that was not going to get to the graphical installer window - boot had been going fine but almost stopped when switching from text to graphic mode, took a couple of minutes.
Seems there is something not quite right with ArcaOS/eCS (snap)graphics drivers and my card - but they have been working reasonably well together - for a couple of years in the case of the eCS installations - and, as windows7 boots without problems and no nasty graphics glitches, I am sure the hardware is not at fault.
I booted ArcaOS to a command line using Alt-F1, F2 and had a look at size of ini files including the ifx backups which all looked about right.
I then thought it might be worth rebooting and using ALT-F1, F3 to reset graphics to VGA. That seemed to go fine - although I seem to recall last time I had to resort to this many years ago the system immediately rebooted following vga driver install which this install had not - but again boot stopped with pmshell.exe the last line on screen.
I rebooted ArcaOS to a command line using Alt-F1, F2. I entered pmshell at the command prompt and the Desktop started but the mouse was extremely jerky - a little movement went a very long way. However, I managed to open the config.sys file for a quick check and could not spot anything wrong.
Being aware that using ALT-F1, F2 uses a different config.sys file - \os2\boot\config.x - I was not surprised that this desktop was using snap rather than the vga drivers that had been installed using ALT-F1, F3
Well, at least we know graphical mode is possible so I rebooted the system - took a minute or 2 to get the jerky mouse into the correct clicking place - and tried booting ArcaOS in the hope that the problem had now "gone away". Boot stopped with a message about not being able to find sddhelp.sys file. That suggests to me that switching to vga from the ALT-F1 screen does not work in ArcaOS5.0.0 as the snap file sddhelp.sys should not be needed by the vga driver. The interesting bit was that we had gone further than the pmshell.exe line...
Out of interest I booted eCS2.2b2 which booted to a working Desktop with no problem now.
No problem booting eCS2.1 now either...
As the snap files were still in place I edited the ArcaOS config.sys and reinstated a couple of missing snap related lines - probably removed during the failed (?) vga install - then rebooted into ArcaOS. No problem booting to a working Desktop. As a precaution I reinstalled snap from the ArcaOS install dvd and rebooted without any problems.
OK, I have battered my head trying to work out what happended: For some reason all 3 of my os/2 based systems installed in this computer failed to boot at the point when switching from text to graphical display - and the ArcaOS install dvd also had problems at this point and that uses Panarama so not just a Snap problem. Being able to boot and run windows7 indicates that it was not a hardware failure.
The "cure" seems to have been booting ArcaOS to a command line using the \os2\boot\config.x file and starting pmshell from the prompt although I totally fail to understand how this could be a "cure"...
The question is: What was the problem?
I think the hang at the end of cd burning is probably involved but I have used the Burn Disc Image app several times previously without any problems and there have not been any hardware or driver changes since last use around 2 weeks ago.
I suspect something windows related, possibly buggy software/undetected malware installed when creating usb stick for son but not sure how this would cause graphics problems in OS/2 based systems.
Any thoughts on this anyone? - I would just like to understand what happened.
Regards
Pete