Calling All Computer Experts: Why am I so unlucky?
 

My troubles in chronological order:


1. I attempted to boot puppy-4.2.1-k2.6.25.16-seamonkey.iso (properly burned onto a cd).

Computer had 64MB ram and 18GB hd. The same thing happened when I upgraded to 512MB ram.

The boot stopped at This was right after using DBAN to wipe the hard drive.


2. I have a hard drive that was wiped with Darik's Boot and Nuke.

I am trying to install Puppy Linux.

In order to install Puppy, I need to format the hard drive.

I am using GParted to format the hard drive. gparted-live-0.4.5-2.iso

When I let GParted do it's thing (default settings) I get this:
3. My laptop's keyboard won't work: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-puppy-753153/

The above I find questionable; slightly weird looking.

Can you verify that your Hard Disk is in fact /dev/hdb? Because it looks to me like, for some reason, Gparted is trying to format a CD drive.

Thanks for the clarification,
Sasha

Well, I don't guess it should be labeled at all, since it's been wiped...
I believe there are 2 SATA hard drives in this computer. One is much smaller than the other.

I don't understand that. The device node of the drive should exist, no matter how empty the drive is. As long as your kernel is able to detect the disk controller, of course. The fact that you used a linux based cd to wipe it out, means that linux does indeed support your hardware. However, you might have a better luck with another distribution or a newer version.

I find that hard to believe that a computer that came with 64 MBs of RAM has a SATA capable controller. I'd rather believe that your drives are regular ATA drives.

This is from a cdrom. Maybe you pick the incorrect volume, try hda instead.

When you boot the computer using Gparted, you can run the graphical partitioning tool that will show you information about your system. Take a look at the menu items in the panel, and take a look at the different harddrives in your system. Gparted could label them differently than the Linux distribution that you are going to be installing after partitioning and formatting. Many distributions come with a partitioning tool that will format the harddrive for you as well.

With you being able to boot into Gparted, your system should have basic compatibility with Linux. Try to use Gparted again and make a note of the information about each harddrive connected to your system and post the results.

Whoops! I meant to say ATA, sorry.
I'll try y'all's suggestions sometime soon.