My 9-year-old notebook computer (Smartbook, Intel Celeron 2,2 GHz, RAM DDR 1 GB) fails to boot, neither Windows XP (from 2-year-old HDD) nor Linux CD will start (used Knoppix und GParted Live).
First I get the POST screen, then the boot screen for Windows appears with selection options "Failsafe mode" (3x), "Start Windows normally" etc.
The BIOS can be started and used properly.

Trying to boot Knoppix from CD results in the following messages:

• [ 1.927868 ] Initramfs unpacking failed: XZ-compressed data is corrupt
  [ 2.339121 ] Kernel panic – not syncing: No init found. Try passing init = option to kernel. See Linux Documentation/init.txt for guidance.
  [ 2.339181 ] Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 3.1.0-1-486 #1
  [ … ] Call Trace:
  [ … ] [<c126d09a>] ? panic + 0x4d/0x13c
  [ … ] [<c13c16db>] ? start_kernel + 0x311/0x311
  [ … ] [<c126bf13>] ? init_post + 0x9a/0x9a
  [ … ] [<c13c17d5>] ? kernel_init + 0xfa/0xfa
  [ … ] [<c1275946>] ? kernel_thread_helper + 0x6/0xd.

Trying to boot GParted Live from CD results in the following messages:

• [ 0.960865 ]
  List of all partitions:
  [ 0.960914 ] No filesystem could mount root, tried:
  [ 0.960987 ] Kernel panic – not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (253,0)
  [ 0.961041 ] Pid: 1, comm: swapper Not tainted 2.6.32-5-486 #1
  [ 0.961083 ] Call Trace:
  [ 0.961133 ] [<c12439cc>] ? panic + 0x38/0xde
  [ 0.961180 ] [<c1368a16>] ? mount_block_root + 0x1f8/0x219
  [ 0.961226 ] [<c1368a70>] ? mount_root + 0x39/0x4d
  [ 0.961270 ] [<c1368b92>] ? prepare_namespace + 0x10e/0x13e
  [ 0.961315 ] [<c136825c>] ? kernel_init + 0xd9/0xe2
  [ 0.961358 ] [<c1368183>] ? kernel_init + 0x0/0xe2
  [ 0.961406 ] [<c1003997>] ? kernel_thread_helper + 0x7/0x10.

The machine is, despite its age, in good condition, not overly worn out. I dismantled it as far as possible to look for possible dust deposits. I found a piece of dust within the fan/cooler, removed it.
Got it all together again, tried to boot the machine. The computer may not have made such a noise at the very start as before when the problem first arose, but the problem with booting persists.

Is anyone familiar with these kinds of error messages?

The type of problem you describe could be a memory problem, or a power problem. At nine years old, capacitors are known to start fail, causing power problems. With this type of problem, as a hardware issue, I would try to strip down a machine. This is much easier with a desktop than a laptop.

You can unplug unnecessary hardware, such as floppy drives, the hard drive, etc. You need the system board, memory and a boot source at a minimum.

Another approach would be to test easily removable parts like memory simms in another system. I know that may not be possible for you on a laptop.

Some good shops may be able to 'fix' it, with more resources.

The errors don't help much at pointing to hardware that may be causing the problem.

Best of luck with it.

Are you getting these errors from the Live CDs themselves??? If so, I suspect a bad CD/DVD drive. If you have an external drive (CD/DVD or USB) that the BIOS can be set to boot from,... try that.

@camorri:
I have heard/read the RAM suggestion elsewhere, too. I am going to look at this.
Also, I have had power problems (mains connection socket) with this machine for years. Especially in recent months, the system crashed many times, not only during resource consuming tasks.
However, now, it gets power immediately and without interruption during these attempts to boot the system.

@JaseP:
I suppose so. What I noticed the last time I tried to boot Knoppix from CD was that the error messages were in black bars, standing out a bit from the rest of the screen which was like pale gray.
In fact, the CD/DVD drive has often made strange noises after power-on.

Unfortunately, my BIOS cannot be set to boot from a USB device, there are only 4 options: HDD, CD/DVD, network drive and floppy drive.

If you have a server, and can try to get kickstart running on it,... you can try a network PXE boot of the install iso... It'd be complicated,...

Otherwise (and probably much easier), I'd say try defining a boot floppy to initiate a bootstrapping boot from a USB drive. Some BIOSes will support a USB CD/DVD drive as a CD/DVD device instead of USB... But your machine sounds old ... So,...

... I found this,... plopKexec,... which ought to make this process easier;
http://www.plop.at/en/plopkexec.html
It appears to be still actively maintained ...

To me, it sounds like the memory or Southbridge. What's happening is that it can't read anything off cd or disk, but I'm not seeing disk or memory errors. It isn't reading the kernel on any system. GParted's list of partitions is dismal.

Your pxe boot (a good doc is maintained in slackware cds in the usb-and-pxe-installers/ directory) is the only hope. If the floppy disk functions, you can download tomsrtbt
http://www.toms.net/rb
which has saved my a** more often than I care to remember. I think it's a moot point what's wrong, and the box is knackered. Quite how is of passing interest to you, but you rarely recover from that sort of mess. Time to raid the piggy bank.

Yeah,... Kinda agree...

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