install lockups

[gsmraxe]

I am trying to install Gentoo 1.4 (latest version) stage 1 onto my machine, but it it locking up in both the bootstrap mode and emerge mode. My System:

XP 2200, 512M ram, Nvidia geforce 2 mx400 64RAM, emu10k1, (tulip) net card, cdburner (generic), 2 10 gig partitions for Gentoo, one swap.

I downloaded and booted using the athlon-xp boot CD, I downloaded the stage1 bz2 file and also tried the one on the CD. I followed the instructions on the website and am still having lockups (solid, machine won't respond to anything). I tried both the gentoo and nofb kernels, disabling apm, apic, raid, dhcp and tried both on and off of the agpgart option. I also tried reiserfs, ext3 and ext2 partitions with the same effect.

I installed Gentoo about 6 months ago with no problems on the same machine, same hardware, (didn't have time to get the system working fully). But for some reason it's locking up now. I tried both i686 and athlon-xp in /etc/make.conf. My HD is fine, I had both RedHat and Slackware installed before no bad sectors.

The only thing I haven't tried is the ide=nodma but once i actually got it installed (several reboots), dmesg told me that dma was disabled. It kept locking up, so I decided to try and reinstall again.

I'm going to give stage 2 a try tonight, after I try the ide=nodma, I wanted the stage1 for an optimal system. Anyone else experience this? It's really weird, I love the idea of the emerge utility, and am looking forward to a fully tweakable system in the near future, any help would be muchly appreciated

Thank you
-Judy

[cyrillic]

Sounds like hardware trouble ...

Are the lockups occuring only during heavy CPU use (running tar, or compiling things) ?
Or even under light load (using nano, or surfing with links) ?

A few things you can check :
Look at the BIOS settings, set CPU and RAM to default or most conservative settings.
Run memtest from the LiveCD
Do a visual check on the motherboard, make sure everything is seated properly, cooling fans work, etc.

If the latest LiveCD just doesn't work well with your machine, try installing with an older one or a KNOPPIX CD.

[gsmraxe]

Yes, it was a RAM problem, someone on USENET suggested this, so I replaced the RAM and so far, emerge system is humming right along. I was really suprised that RedHat or Slackware didn't complain, they usually do with faulty hardware, but I'm glad I found out now, rather than when I'm in the middle of working on something. I've had problems with this computer (last one I buy, I build from now on), and I've had to replace the motherboard, power supply and now the ram, so I've learned my lesson...Thanks for your reply...[/quote]