I am new to Linux and new to this forum. I have been working with a project pc. I have a new HD loaded with Linspire. After loading the o/s I replaced the motherboard and cpu. I now have a Biostar A780L (Didn't see it listed on the HCL) and an AMD Athalon II Multi-Core Processor. Now when the pc boots I get an error:
VFS: Cannot open root device "343" or 03:43
Please append a correct "root" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount the root fs on 03:43
I tried reloading the o/s but the disk won't read from the DVD ROM. Checked my BIOS and it appears to me that it should read from the DVD ROM first but it goes to the HD and tries to load the o/s there.
Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated.

What version of linspire? There may be a chance that whatever version you're using has an older kernel that doesn't support the hardware. I'd recommend getting the latest Ubuntu, Mint, or OpenSuse liveCD and try it out. If the liveCD boots and everything works, check the kernel installed (hint: uname -a) and install a distro with that pedigree.

1 members found this post helpful.

Don't know which version it is. I do have an OEM Edition but the box and the disks do not have version numbers. I guess that part of my problem is that I cannot get the computer to boot from the DVD even though that is first in the BIOS setting. I have a valid copy of mint that I downloaded and that was the original goal, to load mint other hardware problems prevented that and hence the new power supply, mother board and CPU.

I would try unplugging the hard disk and then try booting from the CD/DVD. Maybe a bad DVD drive?

Oh, and I'm pretty sure your linspire stuff won't work on this board. Linspire became defunct back in 2007 according to Wikipedia and the last version released has a 2.6.20 kernel. So there's a lot of hardware that won't be supported by 2.6.20.

So I guess I would try booting the latest version of Mint w/o a hard disk plugged in. If you can do that, then plug the hard drive back in and maybe there's some other BIOS setting that needs to be set. If you can't, then I'd jiggle the cables to the DVD drive and if that still doesn't work, try replacing the drive.

Why are you using Linspire?

I was using Linspire only to get an OS on my system since I couldn't get my copy of Linux Mint to load. Now all is well. I swapped out monitors and was able to load Linux Mint on my machine which was the object of the exercise. Thanks for the help.

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