I just got ahold of a copy of mandrake 8.2 and tried installing it on my desktop and laptop. Desktop installation went wonderfully.. but on my laptop the computer crashes on boot. PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later ide0: BM-DMA at 0x......., BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdbio ide1: BM-DMA at 0x......., BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdbio This is the last thing that it displays.. then it stops responding (the cursor still blinks though). On the installation linux boot, i''ve noticed that what seems to come after this is some information about the cd-rom Is there anything simple i might be missing? perhaps bios settings.. or incorrect kernel arguments.. or perhaps a crappy distribution?

i would say fdisk, and try again. if it dosent work, get a new copy of mandrake

I''ve repartitioned the hard disk three times.. the third time i completely got rid of the windows partition.. thinking that it might be a problem.. is it very likely that it''s a problem with the distribution? Are there distros you would recommend specifically for laptops?

laptop specs are
2ghz celeron
256mb
64mb radeon7500
20gbHD
cd-rw / dvd-r

who makes your box. This is VERY important because of the motherboard. Also, you may want to try it without any kernel arguments. Can you get mandrake 9? I don''t normally reccomend mandy because of stabilty and bloat but This is the distro that was the most laptop friendly for me, but I did like Vector Linux SOHO very much.

The manufacturer is Ashton Digital.. i''ve already shot off an email to them and I am awaiting a response. I believe the board uses the intel 845 chipset. The hard disk is a toshiba..

Yesterday i tried mandrake 5.6 (i believe) and a version of caldera openlinux.. mandrake 5.6 has yet to install on any computer of mine, and openlinux locks when the installation hits 100%..

I have never heard of that company before. 5.6 is arcaic. Any caldera is archaic. You might as well install win 3.1! Try a recent distro like mandrake 9. Have you gone into bios to check conflicts? Did you have any problems with windows? What windows were you running?

[edited by - TMAN on September 8, 2003 2:45:31 PM]

You might need to pass boot params to the kernel in the installer to handle your hardware.

Best bet: Do a google search with your Laptop and your distribution (try Red Hat). Even if you''re not installing RHat, someone probably did. You just need the kernel options to your hardware.

Int.

Yes, it isn''t a very well known company...

Though, i just noticed on their site that they advertise my model as "linux ready"

As for conflicts? nope.. everything worked fine in win98 and winME. I''ve messed around in the bios and set everything i could see to favor linux (including disabling unneeded ports).. didn''t seem to affect it booting correctly...

tried flashing the bios? "linux ready" can mean anything. Again try a new distro, you may have more luck especially since this box looks very new.

[edited by - TMAN on September 8, 2003 5:03:53 PM]

[edited by - TMAN on September 8, 2003 5:05:10 PM]

get mandrake 9.1
it supports acpi out of box
and installed fine for me on a
sony r505dl which uses the i830 chipset