ITLogic() Posted November 5, 2004 Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 Hello, I will try to make this as detailed and clear as possible. The main thing I would like to know is the process of the installation. What is the installation doing at each step because the installation hangs and then my computer reboots at the same point each time? - I am using an old Pentium PC system with an AT motherboard. I'm not sure of the processor speed. It has 32megs RAM, an offbrand PCI video card, 56k PCI modem (not sure what brand), PCI sound card (not sure what brand), PCI PS/2 mouse card and AT keyboard. - It has a 3 gig hard drive. I partioned it to a primary C: and logical D: drive with fdisk. Both partitions are 1.5 gigs and FAT32. The C: partition has Windows ME installed and working well. The D: partition is only formatted with nothing on it, intended for Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official. - I downloaded the 3 iso's from www.mandrake.org and the checksum. All 3 iso's checked out fine with the checksum hash. - I downloaded a free program called CDBurnerXP Pro (http://www.cdburnerxp.se/) to burn the iso's to CD. I would say that perhaps my problem lies here. Maybe this program didn't do a good job, but I also burned a Windows NT iso for another computer right after burning the Mandrake ones. The NT istallation was flawless, so I have ruled that out. - I also created a Mandrake boot disk just in case. On the first boot I used the disk to boot the CD. I got the splash screen and hit "Enter" to install. It did its thing until I got to a black screen with a blue title bar saying Mandrake 10.0 and some other stuff. A small screen came up saying "Detecting USB devices", that went away and was left at the black screen for several minuites. By the way, I don't have any USB devices. Then, the machine automatically rebooted and started the process again. - I went into the BIOS and set it to boot off of the CD first. Same sequence of events. After the "detecting USB" I rebooted. - I burned another copy of the disk 1 iso to see if the disc was bad, but same result. - I burned a 3rd CD at 4x instead of 16x. I read that burning at a slower speed may help, but that didn't work either. - I tried using the vgalo and text installation modes, but that didn't work either. Right now, my guess is that I have some hardware that Mandrake doesn't like. Or, perhaps it doesn't like the partitioning. If I knew what the installation was doing at the time of lock up and reboot, I might be able to figure it out. Granted, I did not try viewing the log at the time of lockup, but I'm not sure if I will even be able since it is locked up. Is there a saved log somewhere that I can go through Windows ME and find and view to see where the problem lies? Sorry this is long winded and I hope I didn't leave anything important out. Thanks for any help! Keith Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpikeyKlitske Posted November 5, 2004 Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 - I downloaded a free program called CDBurnerXP Pro (http://www.cdburnerxp.se/) to burn the iso's to CD. I would say that perhaps my problem lies here. Maybe this program didn't do a good job, but I also burned a Windows NT iso for another computer right after burning the Mandrake ones. The NT istallation was flawless, so I have ruled that out. This i can rule out, I used this program and it did its job just perfectly and all the others i advised using it as well. It even worked for me where K3B failed. Without knowing the rest of it, it sounds to me that ram is a little short, ie only 32MB. If it is that you cant put more ram into it, perhaps a suggestion to fall back to an earlier version of mandrake that is less demanding on your resources, otherwise i would surely put more ram into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted November 5, 2004 Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 I am using an old Pentium PC system with an AT motherboard. I'm not sure of the processor speed. It has 32megs RAM, an offbrand PCI video card, 56k PCI modem (not sure what brand), PCI sound card (not sure what brand), PCI PS/2 mouse card and AT keyboard. 32mbram is definitely not enough to run mandrakelinux. you will need at least 84mbram if you want to use kde as default desktop, minimum for the system is 64 mbram (for icewm or blackbox-windows managers). boost your system to 128+ mbram if possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted November 5, 2004 Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 Sure, more Ram is better. But here the problem is not that. Linux should run, even with 32MB. At least the installer should not crash. Have you checked your bios for options like vga palette snoop (must be off), and other 'performance increasing' stuff, that drastically decrease stability? Have you tried booting with the options: noapic nolapic acpi=off (hit f1 at that first bootsplash, then type that - btw that's NOLAPIC in lowercase, not NO1APIC..) Have you tried booting the alt kernel, as before but giving the option: alt1 to continue the install process? Loads of things to try, and yes, if it all works you will find out that 32MB is a little short on RAM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ITLogic() Posted November 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 Thanks for the replies. I do have an extra 32 meg chip which will get me to 64 so I will do that when I get a chance. Do you think the low RAM would cause the reboot, or is that just something to maximize performance once I get it running? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ITLogic() Posted November 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 Thanks aRTree! You must have poted your reply the same time I posted my previous one. No, I did not try those options. I will as soon as I get a chance. Unfortunately, I'm not at the computer now. The only thing I changed in the BIOS was turning off PnP OS. I have another question that is related, but a little off topic. I have not worked on an AT moterboard in a long time. It seems that there are 2 slots (bays) for DIMM chips and 4 slots (2 more bays) for SIMM chips. Can I mix the SIMM's and DIMM's? Or, should I stick to just one type? The reason I ask is because I have some other extra memory, but they are SIMM's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoopy Posted November 5, 2004 Report Share Posted November 5, 2004 I am pretty sure they can be used together. Just put them in and you will know the first few seconds of booting whether or not they work. A RAM check is like the first process during bootup long before the OS kicks in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ITLogic() Posted November 6, 2004 Author Report Share Posted November 6, 2004 Ok, I added 64 megs for 96 total. I was able to see the log and it seems that the istaller was loading itself, or something, into memory. Once I added the memory it worked! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted November 6, 2004 Report Share Posted November 6, 2004 Sure, more Ram is better. But here the problem is not that. Linux should run, even with 32MB. At least the installer should not crash. well, it seems as if it was the problem ITlogic, please mark this thread as "solved" :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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