hello,
i'm trying to install debian on my HP pavilion dv1071ea (also called dv1000 series) ive tried a lot with/without nolapic noapic on the installation boot, but everytime the installation reach the step of Grub installer it hangs on the sub-step "Determing boot device", when i press Alt+F3 I can see that the installation hangs on the step Setting-up Grub

any idea??

Is this notebook a "Designed for Windows" machine?...............The reason I'm asking is I had a Pavilion 9780c desktop machine which was "Designed for Windows 98", and had problems when I tried installing Debian in the past.............

What would happen is after the installation, when it came time to reboot the machine, the BIOS would freeze during POST...........Not just sometimes, but consistently..............I attribute this to the fact it had a specially modded mobo and BIOS made specially for this machine, which it seemed to not like Debian.................This would even happen after using a Knoppix Live CD and then rebooting the machine....

Yet, I was able to install Slackware without any problems.................

Since then, I built my own rig using an Abit NF7-S2 mobo and no more problems with any Debian-based distro.........

I don't know if this applies in your case, but just thought I'd let you know there may be problems when using one of those HP "Designed for Windows" machines........

yes of course it's a windows designed laptop
and what is the rig you mentioned above what is it?
and someone told me to unpartiton everything, write boot sector to ZERO using GWscan install back windows then linux because it's maybe the partitions the problem

I had a HP Pavilion 9780c desktop computer, not a laptop............I was having some problems because of the mobo and BIOS specially modified for HP to use as a Windows computer...............There was something about Debian it didn't like..........

It could be something about the MBR grub is having problems with..........But you may not have to re-install everything to fix it....

First, try using lilo instead of Grub...............Grub is still a bit buggy, IMO, and I'm not too fond of it, even though it's much prettier to look at during the brief time you see it when booting the machine.....

If that doesn't work, then grab a Linux rescue disk (Knoppix will work here), one that has the 'sfdisk' partition tool. And grab a formatted floppy, doesn't matter what formatting is used as long as it can be read from and written to. After booting the rescue, put the floppy in the drive, and mount it. Assuming we're working with the master drive on the primary ide cable, run this command from a command line:

sfdisk -d /dev/hda > /mnt/floppy/hda.out

This will dump the partitions sizes and parition types to a format readable by sfdisk, called hda.out, to reproduce the current partition table.......................Then use the 'dd' command to clear the MBR:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

This will clear out the first sector of the MBR, where the bootloaders are at.............After that, you can run 'sfdisk -l /dev/hda' to see if the partition table is still there or not........If it doesn't list all the partitions you had before, then you will need to repartititon the disk, using the information stored in the file on the floppy, like this:

sfdisk /dev/hda < /mnt/floppy/hda.out

(Note the redirection arrow is pointing to /dev/hda).........Now when you run 'sfdisk -l /dev/hda', you should see everything as it was to begin with.....

The data on the disk will not be lost as long as the partition table is recreated exactly as it was before and nothing else was done to disturb the data. All you have done here is to wipe the first sector of the MBR and recreate the partition table, if it needed it.

At this point you will have a paritition table, but no way to boot the disk............You should be able to install Grub now, making sure it's config file points to the right partitions.......As long as the partition table can be read and is the same as it was to start with, your data is still okay..........

HTH

hello thank for your reply
first i don't have a floppy drive in this computer.
how can i use lilo instead of grub since the install begin automatic no choices left except at the boot time

secondly i have already installed mandrake 10.0 which can be installed without any problem, do i have to install it and do what you have listed above but instead of using a floppy using a local folder??

thanks

If you have Mandrake already installed, why not add the boot info to Mandrake's bootloader..........I'm not familiar with Mandy, what bootloader does it use?......

And yes, you can use a local directory for storing the partition table information.........However, I still recommend using a rescue disk so the drive is NOT being used while performing the steps I've outlined above........If you have more than one hard drive installed, then mount a partition on the other drive to store the "hda.out" file......

But if you can already boot one Linux distro, you can simply boot it up and enter the boot information for your Debian installation.......problem solved....

how to do that?
the problem is mandrake is a red-hat based linux and when i install mandrake and then reinstall debian it overwrite the past installation

The type of distro doesn't matter, in this case, when dealing with the bootloaders.............................It's the kernel which gets booted by the bootloader, which is simply Linux...........All the distros build around the same basic Linux kernel, using different techniques and schemes for making the packages work together, but it's still the same Linux kernel driving it all......

Obviously, since you have a floppyless system, you couldn't make a floppy boot disk during the installation when asked...............So what you will need to do is to boot to a rescue disk or live cd, mount your Mandrake partition, and 'chroot' into it...........This will gain you access to your Mandrake installation so you can reinstall it's boot loader..........

To do this :

1. Boot to the rescue/live cd
2. Mount your Mandrake partition: mount /dev/<mandy_partition> /mnt/hd (or any empty directory on the rescue disk)
3. Mount the proc filesysytem on the mounted Mandrake partition: mount proc /mnt/hd/proc -t proc
4. Chroot to the Mandrake partition: chroot /mnt/hd /bin/bash
5. If Mandrake has a separate boot partition, mount it: mount /boot
   
   At this point, you can edit Mandrake's bootloader config file to include your Debian installation.
   
6. Reinstall Mandrake's bootloader. For lilo, simply run this command: lilo
   For grub, I _think_ the command is something like this: grub-install --no-floppy /dev/hda
   The --no-floppy option tells grub to not look for any floppy devices on your computer.
7. Enter the command 'exit' to logout of the chroot session and reboot the computer

If everything went okay, you should be able to boot to Mandrake, and Debian (if you included the info in the bootloader's config file)

but how to install debian then? i have to install debian to a different partiton?

I guess I should ask if you're trying to replace Mandrake with Debian, or multiboot Mandrake and Debian??..............

no replace mandrake with debian here's my partitions list
1- ntfs (windows partition)
2- linux swap
3- linux ext3
4- unpartitioned 200mb will be used later for HP Quick Play software

Hmmm...........I'm currently downloading the Sarge DVDs (using jigdo-lite), which seems to be taking forever, so I don't know what the installer is like...................I installed Knoppix to the hard disk, which is how I currently have Debian installed...........

If it's like the Knoppix installer, the bootloader gets installed last, which means you have the Debian filesystem in place, but you cannot boot into it............Is this correct?....

If so, then you can use the chroot method I described above to enter the Debian installation, instead of Mandrake, and manually load grub..........

hmmmmmm yeah that's it well i try something, mandrake has a safe mode option that install lilo automaticall if linux detected i will try it later and i tell you, need to sleep now

ok an update:
there's in fact an option when you boot from the CD, you can type expert and there you can choose between Grub or Lilo.

ok now debian installed, on startup everytime he hangs on something else really weird, i tried with and without "noapic nolapic acpi=off" same thing. :@
any suggestion?

Well, like I first suggested, it might be your "Designed for Windows" laptop just doesn't like Debian.........which means some type of hardware incompatibility, which is not as easily fixable in a notebook as it would be in a desktop computer (like changing the mobo).........