Install hangs (fails) for all distros! Please help.
 

Hi, all.

So, I started to install Ubuntu 6.06, but the installation kept freezing--sometimes at 15%, sometimes at 24%, and sometimes at another percentage I forget. Usually it's 15%, though. When it freezes, the system becomes totally non-responsive. Not even the mouse will move. Although it has sometimes reached the "copying files" (that quote is from memory, and may not be exact) stage, lately it never gets beyond the "creating ext3 file system" (again, that quote may not be exact) at 15%.

Once the installer freezes, everything locks up. I can't move the mouse or even eject the CD. When I tried the "alternate" installation ISO tapping keys on the keyboard would produce nonsensical characters on the display.

I tried installing Kubuntu and Fedora Core, but they both freeze up, too, before the installation gets too far.

A bad hard disk?
Now, my first thought was that it was my hard disk. After all, I am running a super-old 5400RPM PATA 8.4GB pulled from an old Celeron 466 system. However, I performed an extensive diagnostic, including a surface scan for bad sectors, and everything passed with flying colors. I even performed a low-level format, and still no luck.

Bad memory?
I ran memtest for a long, long time, and everything seems fine. I even tried removing one of my DIMMs, but the problem still rears. I will try the other DIMM soon, just to be thorough, but I'm fairly certain the memory is not the issue.

A bad installer CD?
At this point I've tried four different installation CDs--Ubuntu live, Kubuntu live, Ubuntu alternate (text-based) and Fedora Core (a DVD)--and all of them checked out via the self-test diagnostic. I even burned the Ubuntu alternate at 8x, just to be safe. The problem still rears.

So, what the heck is wrong?
That's the question I need answered. If anyone can help, please do!

Thanks in advance!

System specifications:
Athlon XP 1800+ Thoroughbred
MSI KT3 Ultra ARU
256MB (2x128MB) DDR400 @ 333MHz
Samsung 8.4GB Voyager 6 Plus SV0844D
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 128
ATI Rage128 GL AGP (ATI Rage Fury)
Realtek RTL8139 NIC
Lite-on LDW-411S

Maybe you're staring at it crosseyed? :D

You might have a component that is incompatible with Linux. I'd check the HCL to see if you're ok.

If possible, remove everything from your system that you don't currently need to install Linux. Video (if you also have onboard), sound, extra RAM, NIC. Playing swap-out with your hardware can lead to the discovery of your problems.

Reset your BIOS to default values. If you're BIOS has been tweaked for performance, it could have degraded stability.

Did you burn all of your CDs in the same burner? If so, could there be a problem with the burner? Fedora has the option to run a checksum test on your install disks before installation. Did you run that?

Well, about the only things I could remove and still install Linux would be the PCI NIC and sound card. However, both of those work just fine when running from the Ubuntu live CD, so I don't see how removing them could help. I may try that the next time I open up the system, but until then I'd rather not screw with my hardware.

And yes, I did perform CD/DVD checks on all four installation discs I tried.

The freezing thing sounds somewhat familiar to me. It happened to me as well while I was installing Ubuntu and Debian. The most likely cause is your mobo.

The advice I could offer is this:
- see whether you have more luck with a more recent release; 6.06 was completely incompatible with my hardware and 6.10 gave me the same issues - until I fetched the alternative 6.10 install cd; I hear feisty has even better hardware support.
- the installer may fail in graphical mode but work fine in text mode - but sometimes, for whatever reason, it's just the other way round ...
- the installer freezing is something that does happen from time to time; four or five attempts, however, is the furthest I ever had to go before the it finally did its job.

Edit: what, four installation discs? You need only one if you pick edgy or feisty.

By four installation discs I mean I tried four different distros, each with their own disc--meaning my problem can't be a bad disc.

And one of those distros was the latest version of Fedora Core and Kubuntu, each with the latest hardware support. Only the two Ubuntu distros weren't the latest--and even so they were pretty close.

Sounds like you need to pass some kernel parameters at the start of installation like 'no=acpi' and the likes. There is also one for not using DMA which you should look into with such an old disc. I've never had the luxury of using them so I don't know them but you can usually find reference to these via distribution specific installation instructions from the home site. Some of the older hard discs did allow a user to low-level format the disc, but most from the late 1990's till now will not, that is something that only needs to be done once.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...formatLow.html