Installation Problems

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Installation Problems
started by: Goober

Posted by Goober on Oct. 02 2005,00:25

Ok, I am back with more problems about installation. Of course. I have got a different laptop then the one I had before, one with a CD Drive. I am trying to install DSL on it, but it is not working for some reason.

I followed the instructions to the letter for making the CD. I DLed dsl-1.5.iso, made the image on the CD at 12x, nice and slow, finalized it, everything went fine.

Then I stick it in the Laptop, start it up, the CD starts booting, everything seems fine. I go through the screen that says "DSL" with the log and everything, press "enter", it goes to the screen with the cute little Linux Penguin, it checks and scans for USB devices, a whole bunch of code runs down the screen, everything seems fine, and then, suddenly, it stops. That is what it is currently doing. The Caps Lock key on the Laptop is blinking, the CDrom light occaisionally flashes, but it just does, literally nothing.

The last line on the install is "Stack:" followed by a whole bunch of weird things like "c04540e0" and the like, running off the screen. It is a P133Mhz, 32Mb, 1.36Gig HD. More then enough for DSL. If somebody could give me a hand, I would greately appreciate it.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 03 2005,18:53

Get a cd called < Ultimate Boot CD >

Do a memory scan to see if your memory is good...then get the 1.5 syslinux.iso and try again

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by Goober on Oct. 03 2005,23:10

Ok, I'll try that when I get home.

Just one thing I wanted to say is that the BIOS only recognizes that the Laptop has 16Mb of RAM, but it actually has 32Mb of RAM, since that is what was installed. Windows 98 recognizes the 32Mb RAM.

Posted by Goober on Oct. 04 2005,23:29

Ok, I have finished the Memory Test, and I DLed the syslinux1.5 iso, imaged it to a disk successfully, and ran the MemTest. The MemTest went through its little process, i let it go for a long time, and it says that I have 16Mb RAM. For my purposes, as long as it will run DSL. It is supposed to have 32Mb of RAM.

Anyway, the syslinux 1.5 iso didn't work either. This time it got past the stack, but seemed to stop on the "Call Trace" part of the installation process. That is when I just press "enter" after you get past the DSL image.

Then I tried the failsafe method. This goes fine, all the way until it says "Enter runlevel:". Since I had no clue which to enter, I just put 1 in, but that didn't work.

I tried "expert", but that didn't work either. I don't understand how that works.

So . . . ya, I tried the MemTest with the UBCD, my memory seems fine, and syslinux 1.5 iso didn't work. Any other suggestions, or are my dreams of installing DSL on this Laptop not gonna work? And I haven't tried the embedded or USB ways of installing DSl, but I can try those if you guys with more knowledge of DSl think they might work.

Posted by doobit on Oct. 05 2005,12:48

I just got a Toshiba pro 480CDT, which must be similar to yours, except that I have 64 MB RAM. When booting the normal v1.5 liveCD, it also stops just after reporting the processor type. On my desktop computer that's the point where it rescans the usb devices. When I boot after typing lowram at the boot prompt it boots just fine into a minimal fluxbox screen. Try that one. The drawback is that none of the drivers get loaded, but you can enable the ones you need to use for ethernet or whatever, using the control panel (right click on the desktop, pick system->control panel)
Tonight I'll try to figure out exactly which option is stopping the normal boot process, and let you know.

Posted by Goober on Oct. 05 2005,17:05

lowram, ok, thanks, I shall try that when I get home.

Posted by doobit on Oct. 05 2005,18:05

I just got my Satellite Pro 480CDT lat night and almost didn't go to sleep because I was playing with it. It came with Windows 98 early edition installed. My AT&T 6700g wireless card would not work with Win98. I'm hoping I can get it going with DSL 1.5 tonight, but It may be a tough job to do it. When I tried loading DSL last night, it recognized the card as an Athos, which I think it is, but then said it was unable to load the drivers from the live CD. I'm going to do a HDD install tonight to see if it makes any difference.

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 05 2005,18:19

Try booting with:

dsl mem=32M

if your PC has 32 MB of RAM. Make sure that the "mem" is lowercase and the "M" at the end of the "32" is UPPERCASE

Posted by doobit on Oct. 05 2005,23:37

OK, I got mine working with no problems using the syslinux version. It loaded the athos drivers for the wireless pcmcia card, and everything is beatiful now. I did have to enter the BIOS and set the pcmcia card to pci 16 instead of auto.

Posted by Goober on Oct. 06 2005,00:59

Ok, entering in "dsl mem=32M" lead me to the following line:

"Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 1:03" Just below the little smiling Linux Pengiun dude. Then it just sits there blinking.

Entering "lowram" at the boot prompt leads me to the "Enter runlevel:" screen again. Reading the text above, I di notice the words "Segmentation fault" about 7 lines up, perhaps that is a clue . . . ?

Also, I am not 100% sure that the CD is good. It is the dsl syslinux 1.5 iso, and the md5sum thing matched, and it was burnt using GnomeBaker on my Desktop at speed 4, but the CD *could* be faulty. I might try it in my desktop later, to verify that it does work.

I have also tried "failsafe", "fb800x600", "failsafe fb800x600", "noacpi", and one really long one where I essentually turn off HW detection, and all either failed, or led me to that "Enter runlevel" screen.

Anymore suggestions? And I really appreciate you guys giving me a hand here, the help is awesome on these forums. Thanks all!

Posted by doobit on Oct. 17 2005,15:46

I suspect you need to burn a new one. Try it on that other computer.