Trouble Installing, Please help

gentoonewbieinstall · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 4

This is very strange from what I hear from my friends that have tried to help me out. I just purchased a completely low end stock hp pavilon a700y and a hp pavilion vf15 monitor. I have been trying to get a version of Linux to install now for the past two days with no luck. I have tried mandrake 10.0, knoppix live cd, and the gentoo live cd. Mandrake restarts right after I hit return to install(the bar starts to go across the screen then it restarts). Knoppix and Gentoo both look like they are about to start up but instead of going to the next step in the startup processes the screen goes black and nothing happens. I have tried the CD's on my other computer but do not want linux on that one, the reason I just purchased my new comp was to run linux on it. If anyone can help me or knows of a way I can get linux up and running please help. Thank you.

This is what happens when Gentoo starts up from the CD:
ISOLINUX 2.08 2003-12-12 Copyright (C)....
...
boot:
Loading gentoo..........................
Loading gentoo.igz
Ready.

Any help?

kevinb · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 7

sounds like bad framebuffer support - try booting the gentoo-nofb option:

ISOLINUX 2.08 2003-12-12 Copyright (C)....
...
boot: gentoo-nofb

gentoonewbieinstall · n00b Joined: 28 Jan 2005 Posts: 4

That got me to the next part of startup but then it hangs.

boot: gentoo-nofb
Loading gentoo...................
Loading gentoo.igz.............
Ready.
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
_ (blinking)

so it looks like some progress, but still not there,
any more suggestiongs? Thanks for the help.

chrisii · n00b Joined: 13 Dec 2005 Posts: 11

I have this very same problem with Gentoo 2005.1 Live CD, I boot the system using "gentoo-nofb noapic" and the system just sits there saying "Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel."

Suggestions?

XenoTerraCide · Veteran Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 1418 Location: MI, USA

what kind of hard drives do these system's have? If they are sata I you might try adding ide=nodma to the boot paramaters.
_________________
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chrisii · n00b Joined: 13 Dec 2005 Posts: 11

standard ide. 3gig. already tried that.

pentium 200mhz
intel i430hx
128mb edo ram
32x cdrom

i have tried as many nowhatever options i could find. so i am seeking advice as i know not what else to do.

chrisii · n00b Joined: 13 Dec 2005 Posts: 11

well no one here is of any help so I am just going to use a different motherboard.
thanks for the wonderfull help.