Here's my issue, my HDD crashed (corrupted NTFS filesystem and I did all the fixes I could find), I tried to use some live booting so I wouldn't be out a computer until I fix this.

I have the following problems.
Ubuntu will freeze in the middle of detecting hardware (or at least thats what the phase says it is doing at the time)

Knoppix will freeze in one of two places
-right after detecting PCMCIA
-if I use nopcmcia when booting, it will freeze at the starting UDEV hardware detection.

If I use nopcmcia and noudev it will boot with knoppix, however I am unable to use konsole when I do this.

This has happened consistantly since I got this laptop.

I ran memtest which turned up nothing, but could the problem with these still be bad memory? Or would something else be the issue and how can I find out what it is?


Just in case it would matter, this is a Sony Vaio laptop.

It probably does matter; what model?

It's a VGN-FS690P

I'm not turning up anything on that model. Could you try a more "leading edge" distribution, like the Fedora 5 LiveCD or even the Fedora 6 Test 2 LiveCD?

It sounds like hardware detection is causing the hang, and this is something that's more likely to be addressed the more current the software.

I'm almost positive it is hardware detection. However as far as I know nothing is very new in this laptop. I could've sworn Ubuntu was good at hardware detection.

However as soon as I get home to a computer I can actually use I'll try using FC6's LiveCD.

A note though, I'm almost positive that it'll freeze as it happens consistantly for all versions of Ubuntu I've tried, but I'll report results back.

It is, as are most desktop oriented distributions, including Fedora Core.

The problem is that it can take years for proprietary hardware and interfaces to be reverse engineered. The laptop I'm using at the moment had an usuable Firewire/IEEE1394 port for 4 years, until the change was accepted into the kernel.

More recent software will always have better hardware support. Fedora Core's claim to fame is that it uses "leading edge" software. Ubuntu uses older, more stable software. It's just a question of picking the best tool for the job.

I havn't gotten a chance to get Fedora yet, but here's what I was able to do.

I was able to get Knoppix working with the following info.

nopcmcia noudev

After I get that up, I edit my xorg.conf file to include my 1280x800 resolution (cosmetic), then I run the command sudo init 2. Then from the prompt I have to chmod 0777 /dev/pty* (if I don't do that I cannot use konsole), then I init 5 again, and I'm good to go.

I'm in the process of getting my files off my corrupt NTFS drive.