3 linux distros fail to boot on new pc, windows works
 

So I just built a pc for the sole purpose of running slackware, relearning it and setting up a webserver, subversion, ssh, etc. the parts are not the latest and greatest that a linux distro wouldn't be able to recognize them, the newest part that i have a a SATA DVD burner, but the slackware disc boots, but it hangs and doesn't enter the command line without me having to ctrl-c out. then i tried to partition the disk and it would just hang have the time, never actually finished.

I tried booting ubuntu from a persistent flash drive that has worked many times before, once the kernel loads for the live cd it just hangs with a blinking cursor in the left hand corner.

I tried damn small linux for the heck of it. once i tell it to boot, it restarts my computer.

i got fed up and installed windows, worked perfectly fine. the one thing i notice when i ran a chkdsk is that stage 5 (checking free space) took extremely long to finish (and it never did cause i canceled out of it) i talking 30 minutes to get to 23%. never had that problem in the past with other computers.

so then i booted from the ultimate boot cd to check my mainboard. i did memtest for 7+ hours, no errors. i did the proc test, no errors, i did the seagate short test (no errors).

any one have a clue what this could be? i have an inkling that it is the hard drive, but why wouldn't the live cds work?

thanks.

remove HDD - then try live.
swap out the DVD burner with another you know works.
So does the slackware disk boot or not? Do you get a commandline or not?

Tell us the HW constellation.

You have to let the fsck actually finish... it does finish. If it is taking a very long time, there may be issue with the drive. Also check the bios configuration.

Some live CDs try to mount drives they see, or, at least, find information about them. If there is trouble doing this, you could get a long hang... though I'd expect it to time out in a few minutes.

Note: Linux tends to be much fussier about HW than Windows. If you get a boot: prompt (or ubuntu's install menu) then you should attempt to pass parameters to the kernel.

Try a different drive.

It sounds like the kernel is grumpy about something. If you think it's the hard drive then I would disconnect it and then try booting from the liveCD again. You don't need a hard drive to boot the liveCD, but the liveCD will try to mount a hard disk if it finds one. Sketchy memory is a good guess too, but I think you're right with the hard disk.

Hardware:

4400+ AMD x2 Athlon
ECS AMD690GM-M2
2 GB Geil Ram
Seagate 250 GB Sata 2
LG Sata DVD Burner

I just tried booting verbosely from the flash drive without the hdd or dvd drive plugged in and it hangs at this step

clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -293823194131 ns)

I read around about that being a problem with the smp kernel or something? i will download the 64 bit ubuntu disc to see that does anything different.

so the ubuntu 64 bit disk is working fine so far with installation and what not. am i limited to just 64 bit distros though? what else could be the problem?

With dual 4400 Athlons? Probably.

i am assuming you interpreted me as the proc being a dual core, not two processors. don't have two processors.

Hi,
Which Slackware version 12/12.1?

Which kernel did you use for Slackware? I would use the smp kernel .
Did you read the Slackware 12.0 CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT, UPGRADE.TXT and RELEASE_NOTES?

I would suggest that you read the documentation that PV has provided for Slackware 12.1; Announce 12.1, Slackware-Howto, CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT, UPGRADE.TXT. Plus the other text files relevant to your needs.

thank you for all the links and resources. i am running arch 64 right now and is working nicely. once i get comfortable using this, i may bump up to slack.

Live CD ISO's not booting completely?
 

ISOlinux: , Live CD.
Have a "Disk error 80" or "Disk error 04, AX=4280, Drive 9f" or similar errors?
Or maybe "Data for LiveCD not found", "no bootable medium found", "root block device is unspecified or not detected."?
Try burning a new ISO image onto a new CD R disk. That worked for me.
I was using a CD RW disk which would not boot any of several Live CD ISO burns.

Details:
The speed that the Lite-on used while burning with the new CD R disk was 28m/sec vs. 4m/sec while burning to the CD RW disk. Cdrecord used the default speeds for both of these burns. Nice surprise that speedy burn!
Then the Live CD loaded very quickly also...and actually completed the Ram install on my new system. Nice to see that Slax has k3b installed for burning.

Since I had almost no HDD space left due to the development apps, I downloaded the ISO file to my flash drive on USB.
In Linux terminal mode, the command I used to burn the ISO was similar to this:
cdrecord dev=/dev/hdc -v -dao -eject /var/autofs/zip.1/zip.1/partition1/filehere.iso


Here are the specifications of the systems if interested...
Old system: Intel 2Ghz Pentium 4, 500m memory, 7GB drive, Lite-on CD RW 48-12-48, Lite-on was an upgrade. Xandros Linux 4.0, formerly an XP box,( the 40gb HDD crashed.) Nvidia Geforce Ti 4200, Audigy sound card.

New home built system: Intel Core2 duo 2.53mhz 7200, Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L Mobo, 2Gb Corsair 667, Antec gaming box, a Visiontek Radeon HD3450 512m,
WD SATA 320Gb, Iomagic SATA DVD RW 20X, and a nice Slax LiveCD install for now.
For the purpose of fps Gaming, I'll go with Windows Vista/SP1. Cube/Sauerbraten is great entertainment on Linux though, with great 3d effects.

Cheers,
freiheit@comcast.net

NVM, different hardware 8)

If you are still having stability issues try using the acpi_use_timer_override switch

I had a similar issue, and resolved by resetting my BIOS to the defaults. Not sure if you've tried that, but I tried a ton of stuff before figuring it out. Hope it helps.