payasam Posted June 12, 2009 Report Share Posted June 12, 2009 I have by now installed 2009.1 four or five times, with Gnome. The sequence of events each time has been this: first, applications have begun crashing; second, the machine has begun falling back to the log-in prompt; and third, booting has become impossible because of a "kernel panic". My machine has a Pentium 3 processor running at 1,000 MHz and 256 MB RAM. One consultant has told me that only a Pentium 4 or above will do, and another has said that I need more RAM. I do not know what to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted June 12, 2009 Report Share Posted June 12, 2009 The CPU and RAM amount are just adequate. But I suspect you're having hardware issues (most likely misbehaving RAM or HD controller). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
payasam Posted June 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 12, 2009 RAM has been checked more than once, scarecrow, but HD controller is definitely suspect. In the past month I've had various otherwise inexplicable problems related to hard disks. Good to know that a 1000 MHz P-3 with 256 MB RAM is enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tux99 Posted June 13, 2009 Report Share Posted June 13, 2009 (edited) Next time before reinstalling the OS, do a full check of the hard disk with: badblocks -svw /dev/sdX (replace X whith the device number of your harddisk, likely 1 if you only have one hdd) you can launch this from the boot CD by booting in rescue mode. You need to be aware though that this will completely wipe your entire hdd, so do this only if you don't have any data on it that you haven't backed up. Also this test will take many hours (even 24-48 hours) depending on the size of your hdd and it's speed. If this shows up any errors then either your hdd has defective sectors, or your hdd controller (likely part of your motherboard) is defective. Regarding your hardware: the cpu is definitely powerful enough, but the RAM is on the lower end, at least 512MB would be much more usable, but this is not the reason for your problems and I would not advise you to do any RAM upgrades before you have localized the problem (if the motherboard is the problem then you will have to replace it anyway and a new motherboard will need different RAM in most cases). Edited June 13, 2009 by tux99 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
payasam Posted June 13, 2009 Author Report Share Posted June 13, 2009 Thank you, tux99. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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