Hi, This was my first attempt at a Linux install and on my laptop. I have a-

Multivision Solus 1030+ (company now gone bust so no tech support)
P4 2.6 GHz
512 MB
ATI M10 GPU
60 GB hard disk
Toshiba DVD writer
AMI BIOS
(Laptop worked fine with WinXP SP1)

I downloaded Redhat 9 and burned the ISOs to disc with my winXP desktop machine. Prior to dual boot with winXP I defraged the drive and installed partion magic 8 on my laptop. I used the wizard to create a 10 GB primary partition for Linux and used 500 MB of that for a Linux swap partition (a bit small I know now, but not a major problem). I set the Linux partition to active and rebooted with my new Red Hat 9 cd 1 in the dvd drive.

After a successful POST, the redhat screen comes up asking me to install in graphical or text mode. I choose graphical and then on subsequent tries used text but the result is the same- After dozens of lines of mostly meaningless text (to me anyway) the machine freezes and the only way out is to hit the reset button. The last 5 lines of text were-

ehci-hcd 00:03.3: PCI device 1039:7002
ehci-hcd 00:03.3: irq 5, pci mem e080d000
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
PCI: 00:03.3 PCI cache line size set incorrectly (o bytes) by BIOS/FW.
PCI: 00:03.3 PCI cache line size corrected to 16

My laptop then beeps rudely and freezes. After trying to install in graphical and text modes with no luck, I tried to access the BIOS to see what I could disable to help things along, but now the BIOS asks for a password. I did have a BIOS password before attempting installing Linux but I disabled it for convinience before the installation and now when prompted by the BIOS it doesn't accept that old password. I only ever had one password.

To me it seems the last line that says "...corrected to 16" implies that the installer altered my BIOS settings and is possibly responsible for me not being able to enter the BIOS now.

So my questions are,
1) Can the redhat installer change my BIOS settings and if so how can I gain access to it? (short of opening the chasis and removing the battery)

2) What can I do about the cache line size problem?

Any help will be very gratefully received. Apologies for perhaps an overly long post but I'm so new to linux that I don't know whats too much info.

Cheers

i'm having same exact issue, though i don't have any bios access issues...RH simply hangs and will not install. have RH9 cd's which were just used to install successfully on another machine. but my attempted install simply hangs just as described above.

ECS G736 Laptop
P4 3.0 GHz
1024 MB
ATI Radeon 9600
60 GB hard disk
Toshiba CD/DVD

anyone with any ideas welcome! thanks!

kp

Hi kp,

In the end, I had to open up my laptop and reset the cmos to get past the password issue. I still don't know if Red Hat altered my BIOS.

Anyway, to successfully install Red Hat I flashed the BIOS with the latest version for my machine, rebooted and then tried installing Red Hat again. Worked without a hitch after that.

I hope that works for you.

Ben

Kp, I just realised that you've got the same chasis as me so probably your problem will have the same solution.

I need a keyboard for my chasis so if you know where to order one from I'd really appreciate it? I've been looking for ages without success.

Cheers

thanks for the info! trying to flash bios, tho no floppy drive and winflash crashes repeatedly. grrr. sorry, no info on keyboards.