I have a really old comp
HP Pavilion 6630
win98
500mhz celeron
192mb ram
10gb
cd-drive
nvidia 420mx 64mb

anyway all I can ever get to install is Win98, I cant upgrade to Win 2000, or any version of Linux and I've yet to figure out why, maybe its a BIOS issue?

ive found other posts online where a person did get 2000 or linux to install so I konw its possible

my cd drive works, as I can install 98 all over again, it seems like its going to work then quits halfway, ive tried several cds, several new burns from new downloads, HDD has no errors, i can use DELPART and FDISK to fix up the HDD however and wipe it clean but its no use

this machine is worthless if all i can do is keep 98 on it

crap i posted this in the wrong forum

You could try borrowing an newer CD-ROM drive and install from it- many old drives cannot read modern media dyes properly. Your specs are OK for an average Linux desktop.

As you haven't specified any distro, it's probably in the right forum at the moment (Everything Linux).

If you're trying to install Mandriva, Installing Mandriva or Hardware would be suitable. If you mainly trying other distros, then Other Linux Distributions.

My advice is to try puppy linux. It is a small distribution that runs a live cd.
If you like it, you can install it to your hard disk. Here are the links:

Main page: http://www.puppylinux.org/

Download: ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/

The last version is : puppy-2.16-seamonkeyfulldrivers.iso (~90Mb)

Hope it helps

I would suggest checking your RAM for errors. Grab and burn memtest86+ and let it run on your RAM overnight.

thats probably it, i found a similar post
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/Installatio...ion_t33426.html

the drive is 36x max (no rewriteable ability) so it is probably old

i tried the ubuntu alternate version (its not a live cd, just a text installer) and burned it at 32x and it was installing but it said a few files on the cd were corrupt, I may try to burn it at a slower rate and see what happens

mandriva's cd seems to be a live cd also, i wish they had a cd with a text installer only

i wanted to use mandriva, cuz i've always liked their stuff but at this point i just need a test box with linux on it

im sure there is a text install for mandriva still. i know its on the dvd version, but no idea about whether its on any of the CD versions.

James

Try burning at 2x or 4x, and give Xubuntu a try... it works very well with 192MB of RAM.

Well I gave up back then, but this week I figured I'd give it some more tries, I tried an even slower burn at 4x and I took out a DVD drive from another computer (something I didnt want to do before, cuz my computers are in cabinets) that didnt work, I tried to get 2000 on the machine and it didnt take it no matter if it was NTFS or FAT

I got the latest bios drivers on HP's site (suprised they were there, its under the XP stuff for this computer) and followed the steps and it didnt work

I then was looking around HP's site and saw a "chat with support" link, I figured what the heck I'll see if they let me talk about a computer i bought in early 2000, sure enough they did (although i dont like to admit talking to tech support ) i gave him the run down of everything I've tried to do to get Win 2000 installed, Win2000 was getting installed all the way except it would never get to the desktop, it would lock right before it got there (linux install just died somewhere in install)

anyway i told him the BIOs had an option for onboard video but it was seperate from the other video option that only had AGP and PCI, the motherboard has no AGP slot, and that I wasnt going to pick AGP for fear of not being able to undo that option, he told me the AGP option was not the onboard video anyway

I told him its been on PCI, and that i tried it with onboard on and off, but then said to unplug the video card and try it and sure enough it worked, i suppose the mobo knows to use onboard video if its unplugged

i was suprised HP answered my questions to a computer so well out of date and warranty, figured I'd share this bit of info sicne when I was searching again for some stuff on google my own post came up

Anyway Win2000 installed and it seems Linux is working good too

forgot to mention the video card I was using is a geforce 4mx 420 pci 64mb

i havent tried to put it in yet, still configuring stuff for now