Install fails each time

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Install fails each time
started by: maximumbarkly

Posted by maximumbarkly on Nov. 21 2005,00:46

First of all, I am new to linux, but I'm comfortable with it. I grew up using DOS, I hated windows 3.1 (only because my father wouldn't let me use his shiny NEC 486)

So i have a toshiba satellite pro laptop, well aged, I found it in a recycling center. It works, that I'm sure of, as I've successfully installed windows 95 (which is gone already, was trying poormans install). about 16 megs of ram, a low speed pentium processor of some sort, I haven't checked, probably 70mhz.

So i can't boot from my CDROM, but it's not the floppy boot thats the problem. I get a fault every time i try to load DSL, once it finds the KNOPPIX folder it begins to flash a wealth of errors.

I'm near certain it's not detecting my hardware properly, and I have tried the failsafe install option. Any ideas? anything else I can describe?

Posted by reid_geo on Nov. 21 2005,00:59

Hmmm... It almost sounds like you do not have a bootable image on the disk. Did you write the DSL .iso file to CD as an "image" (as opposed to just creating a "data CD")? If so does this boot properly on another PC?

Posted by maximumbarkly on Nov. 21 2005,01:23

well i burned it as an iso from nero.

it installed on a pentium 4 dell (that i found in the dump the very same day) without a hitch.

its not DSL 1.5 its 2.0RC2, could this be my problem?

Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 21 2005,07:06

Try booting with:

dsl mem=16M

or better yet:

lowram mem=16M

or for extremly low ram minimum hardware detection:

dsl 1 vga=normal atapicd noideraid nosound noapic noacpi acpi=off noscsi noapm nousb nopcmcia nofirewire noagp nomce mem=16M

Posted by meldra on Nov. 25 2005,10:21

Greetings,

If you have a desktop computer get a 2.5 / 3.5 ide hdd converter and 'piggyback' the laptop hdd inside the desktop, install dsl, put laptop hdd back into the laptop, boot and xsetup.sh ... worked for me.

Edit: forgot to mention, make sure you have a swap partition for so little ram. My laptop toy machine has the same memory. I had to make a tiny swap (40mb) because the recommended 128mb took too much of the 541mb hdd and X wouldnt load properly.