Glad to find something related to Linux of a support nature. I've been getting n00bed and laughed at for a few days now!

I'm new to Linux, but I'm trying to install it on one of my computers. I've tried installing Debian and I have a Live CD Distro called Slax. Everytime I boot my computer, I get a logo for the distro, and when I hit enter to boot, the prompt says "Uncompressing Linux...ok. Booting the kernel..." and this is where one of two things happen. Either 1) the system reboots or 2) nothing happens, no matter how long I wait.

I was once told that a vanilla kernel won't work, and I'll have to know my hardware (which I do), but I don't know what to do to get it to boot.

Any suggestions would be helpful!

When it reboots can you let us know what the last message is?

Can you tell us a bit about the hardware your running on.

I'm a Compaq cheapie computer I bought at Walmart.

I had onboard video, no AGP slots, Intel Celeron 2.66Ghz, 256MB of RAM (PC2700 DDR SDRAM), 40GB Ultra DMA HDD, 8GB Maxtor ATA/EIDE HDD (older HDD off of an old computer, which I'd like Linux to be installed to), CDRW Drive. I'm not sure about the motherboard make and model. I can get more specific stats later if need be (I'm at work) , but let me know if you can work with this.

The last message is "Booting the Kernel..." on a DOS-looking screen. It either does nothing (SLAX) or reboots (Debian).

Can you possibly try a third distro? I'd suggest damn Small Linux as it's small but has good hardware detection. If it doesn't work, I would begin to suspect flaky hardware. Can you use memtest86 to check your memory? Will the machine boot Windows?

Should I:

boot: -noacpi -noagp

You think that might get it booted??