zlim Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 (edited) I guess my newer notebook is destined not to have linux on it. Almost everything I try either freezes, says graphic mode not supported (or something similar) or does nothing.Zenwalk is the latest casulty. These are the last two lines:Something went wrong and we can't continue. This should never happen. (Tell me about it!)Please reboot your computer with Ctrl+Alt+Delete...(ctrl+alt+del didn't work)Just to answer the question, yes I checked the MD5 hash before I burned so the CD is pkay. I'm sure if I put it in my desktop, it will work without a problem.Back to the drawing board.Now you know why I try live distros. at least live, I can tell if an install is possible.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I've tried it three times. The last time I pressed F2 for verbose mode but nothing happened.Here is additional information...starting USB supportwaiting for USB devices (this is where it has a problem)I did put in a PS/2 mouse because I know distros have problems with a USB mouse on this notebook. For the 2nd and 3rd attempt to run, I disconnected my USB hub figuring that might be creating a problem.more info after the USB devices...Fatal error occured - zenlive data not found.You are maybe using an unsupported boot device (eg. SCSI or PCMCIA CD-ROM). There are no SCSI devices in the notebook and the only PCMCIA device I own is a wifi card whic I'm not using. I connect wired to see if I can get a distro to load. The CD burner/DVD player is the installed one that came with the notebook.Any advice on choices for another boot attempt?Attempt 4: I went into the BIOS and changed from both to auto, just to be sure that wasn't the problem. I pressed pause to look over the boot options. I didn't see anything unnerving. So I let the boot continue and I arrived at the same place with the same message. Edited June 19, 2007 by zlim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ross549 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 What model notebook?Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 (edited) If this: HPN5470 notebook, 1GHz AMD Athlon XP, 256MB RAM, ESSAllegro PCI Audio, Trident Cyberblade XP, Toshiba CD-RW/DVD, floppy, modem and ethernet, USB ports, serial, monitor, and printer ports, 1-PS/2 port, and a tv out portis the system we're talking about here, my guess would be that you're experiencing problems due to the vid hardware (Trident Cyberblade XP).You probably won't be able to run a Live distro. You'll need to install it and modify your xorg.conf to use vesa drivers. Or maybe Bruno or Striker could walk you through how to feed the Live CD kernel the framebuffer for booting. A Google search revealed a couple sources for Trident CyberBlade Linux drivers, but most seemed to be outdated drivers for Xfree86. You'll have to snoop around. Again, though... to install and use those drivers, you'll actually have to install the OS.Time for a new laptop? ;)You could run D*mnSmallLinux off a USB flash drive. There are no SCSI devices in the notebook...Liz, Zenwalk uses the new 2.6.2* kernel with the libATA drivers. It sees ALL devices as SCSI, whether they are or not. I've posted in the Downloading Zenwalk and the libATA S*cks! threads extensively about this. Edited June 19, 2007 by V.T. Eric Layton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted June 19, 2007 Author Share Posted June 19, 2007 Thanks Eric. At least I now know what the major problem with this notebook is - video.In the distros where you are given choices, I select Vesa rather than Xorg. The newer ones just assume what you want, load everything and I don't know enough to stop and figure exactly what I need to tell it to run. Time for a new laptop? My next notebook will be a MacBookPro.I do not have the option to boot from a flash drive - the notebook is too old, so D*Smallinux is out. (I do have some CDs around). I'll have to check my notes to see what happened when I tried to run various versions of it.I checked my notes and I did manage to get Kubuntu to run. I think the problem with it was that I could not configure my printer to work. I currently have PCLinux .92 on it because most of the other versions also seem to give this notebook fits.My other option is puppy linux. I got that running, I think but again had a problem to get the printer to be found. Puppy doesn't include all the items that some of the more robust distros include.I may just have to settle for only windows on here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruno Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 If I remember well we did already try VectorLinux ( 3.2 or 5.0 ) on that laptop, did we ? Bruno Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
striker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 The best laptop hacker is a slacker ! I think you might have fair chance with Slack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onederer Posted June 20, 2007 Share Posted June 20, 2007 Thanks Eric. At least I now know what the major problem with this notebook is - video.In the distros where you are given choices, I select Vesa rather than Xorg. The newer ones just assume what you want, load everything and I don't know enough to stop and figure exactly what I need to tell it to run. My next notebook will be a MacBookPro.I do not have the option to boot from a flash drive - the notebook is too old, so D*Smallinux is out. (I do have some CDs around). I'll have to check my notes to see what happened when I tried to run various versions of it.I checked my notes and I did manage to get Kubuntu to run. I think the problem with it was that I could not configure my printer to work. I currently have PCLinux .92 on it because most of the other versions also seem to give this notebook fits.My other option is puppy linux. I got that running, I think but again had a problem to get the printer to be found. Puppy doesn't include all the items that some of the more robust distros include.I may just have to settle for only windows on here.I've not been following threads lately, so I'm not up to date. Have you tried Freespire? The reason that I mention that distro, is because for me, it was the ONLY distro that would run properly in this laptop. I have an HP Pavilion zv6000, and none of the other distros would or could handle the Broadcom built-in wireless card. Freespire ran right out of the box! No fuss no muss. That distro has all the commercial codecs which is missing in other distros. And that makes life much easier. And Freespire comes as a live distro that can be installed. It is based on Debian, so most Debian applications can run in this distro. With their Warehouse, you can search for what application that you need, and one click, and it will download it, take care of all the dependencies, and install it for you.If you already tried it, then I guess that you will be stuck with Windows. Hope this helps. Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zlim Posted June 20, 2007 Author Share Posted June 20, 2007 Freespire froze.Vector Linux SOHO 5.1 froze at /etc/random-seed to initialize /dev/urandom (at least I think the word is urandom; sometimes even I can't read my notes!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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