Cannot Install ANY Linux on Desktop
 

Hi
Ive been facing problems with linux installation on a friend's desktop....
I have installed Suse9.1,Ubuntu,FC5,FC7,openSUSE10.2 earlier on different machines but never faced such a problem...

the machine config is as follows..

AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core 4400+
Asus M2A-VM
160GB SATA
1GB DDR2
PS2 mouse n keyboard


I had a doubt bout SATA and the keyboard being a usb one!
But both of these doubts hv been cleared!im unable to reckon out the exact reason why im not able to install any linux on this machine!in case of FC7, the screen goes blank as son as i select the installation option..hv tried the options with ACPI disabled, hv run the memory tsts n everything was clean!even Ubuntu 7 sleeps soon after i select the installation option....

In case of openSUSE 10.2, the installation alts soon after starting udev and detecting the mouse...which is what made me doubt bout some usb device connected to the machine which might b responsible for this situation....but there's none!
any help here?

probubly not the problem but, have you changed bios configureations? and please you proper grammer i had no clue what you were talkign about i had to read your message about 20 times litteraly

check the ram of the machine, sounds like it is corrupt.... you can use memtest. select it from the boot menu where you usually start the installation in opensuse e.g.

@xennetwork
Ive lso tried to change the BIOS settings but it did not help....
Regarding bad grammar, im sorry about it but ecept for a few typo errors, i dont see any grammatical mistakes as such!Will take care hereafter.... :)

@selenbird
the RAM is fine because WIndows XP is running on the same machine without any issues!
Ive seen another thread where someone has faced a similar problem with a Philips laptop.... the problem was solved after disabling the network adapter as a suitable driver for the same was not available in the installation cd/dvd!they could figure it out from the installation log in which it was stuck at the network adapter!
but in my case, its not showing anything....and in openSUSE, it soon halts after detecting the mouse...

Surely sounds like a hardware "problem" (not necessarily bad hardware, but some that is causing malfunctions in the installer's run). If I were you, I'd try to disable everything that's not needed and see if it then runs - if it does, start enabling things again one by one, until the breaking point shows up. It depends on your BIOS for example, but try to see if you can disable some devices there - maybe an onboard audio, modem, network card, acpi stuff etc.. Then you shouldn't use any wireless devices if any (like mouse), try to stick to regular USB or PS2 (nowadays PS2 is getting rare I guess, USB should work just fine) mouse/keyboard, maybe take your external graphics card out if you have one and can do it, just in case. You could even use a text-mode installer, to make sure it's not about graphics cards or such..

Oh, and I should have mentioned this first: burn a Knoppix live-cd (or some other flavour) and boot it - does it work, or does it get stuck? If it gets stuck, where? This is a nice test, no need to install anything, and with live-cds you should have a wide range of all sorts of drivers available that you can then try to disable when detecting the problem..

It's a bit difficult if you can't get any sensible logfiles out of the situation, but it might help "leaving off" as much as you can - hoping that the problematic part is something you can leave out during the installation, and later deal with it's installation.

The problem is that the M2A-VM uses the new AMD/ATI northbridge that includes an onboard graphics adapter. That chip is just new enough that most of the distros don't have drivers yet. I had exactly the same problem with that mobo.

I did finally get two distros to work. Both 64 bit Sabayon and 64 bit Debian installed and ran successfully. Sorry I don't remember the release numbers of either and can't check because I am at work right now. Both distros were the most recent as of about June or July. I was a little surprised that Debian worked on the new hardware since it is not known to be on the bleeding edge.

You might try one of those distros, depending on where you want to be on the stability scale.

Before you criticize someone else's use of English, it might be good to fix your own first. In this case, the OP is almost certainly not a native speaker.

In your post, I find:
4 spelling errors--one maybe a typo.
Failure to capitalize in several places
Missing periods to separate sentences
"you" instead of "use"
adverb "litteraly" (sic) is misplaced, and therefor ambiguous--Do you mean "read literally" or "literally had to"

just because the hardware runs under XP does not mean you do not have bad ram.

also see a poster a few above me, it is the MB, i was going to suggest video card as that is what it sounds like.

http://sabayonlinux.org/

go there and grab their 3.4 release DVD and try to boot from that. it is very bleeding edge and has a load of 3rd party drivers including ATI so would be a great place to start.

when i first put my rig together it was to new and none of the then current distros worked at all even from a CLI point. i had to wait several months before all of my hardware was supported. once it was, my rig runs 90% under Sabayon, and the rest under winXP when i am doing video editing.

ok
im gonna try out disabling everything from BIOS and then enabling the devices one by one!
i was aware of the ATI Radeon northbridge blues and i have seen people having problems with it...but in their case, at least the installation continues in text mode and FC7 is up without X support!
However, in my case, its not letting me install in the first place....
Will also go through sabayonlinux.org.... hvnt tried it yet!...but it sure does sound good! :)

I know in some BIOS you need to set the USB to support 'legacy' mode if you are using a usb keyboard.

Also try installing using generic video mode (if your Linux install allows it, see F1, F2,...Fn for help).

Also install to textmode (or command line or runlevel 2) to see if the problem exists outside of X.

Use a live-CD like knoppix, and install with expert mode or debug mode and/or turn off as much h/w stuff
like noapm, noapic, etc (see the boot cheatcodes).

it is definetely not a problem of the distro. I still think it is the ram. what is so difficult to try out memtest? its fast and you could rule out a ram problem if everything is fine with memtest...

or as the previous poster suggestes in a side sentence: acpi related stuff.. -> noapic, noacpi

Would sound silly, but are you using a 64 bit version of the distro

good point @jayakrishnan

no...its not the 64 bit version...its a 32 bit version of FC7
also, ive tried running the memtest n it took almost about half an hr n still it wasnt getting over...so i aborted the same....