2015-10-07

Tonight I attempted to debug my dead Toshiba Satellite 5105 laptop one more time, using a Browser Linux CD. All I could see was the attached screen shot showing the very beginning of the boot-up process, which went no further than the line "Loading vmlinuz .....".

I think my major problem is the defective DVD drive. It prevents the original Windows XP recovery disk from being read correctly and is doing the same thing to the Browser Linux disk. I chose Browser Linux because it is the simplest Linux distribution available to me at the moment and not a Windows OS.

The machine did not respond when I tried to boot up from a live Ubuntu 12.0 USB. The heart of my problem is that I've no way to access the laptop's BIOS in order to boot up Linux from a USB.

Any help will be much appreciated as always.

Julianvb

wow. ancientware.

first of all, what is "Browser Linux"? never heard of it.
screenshot seems to be hinting at something from the puppy linux multiverse.

how did you boot it if neither booting from dvd nor from usb is possible???

what did your research show up about installing linux on machines this old?
most probably something about requiring a non-pae capable kernel, amongst other things.

why can't you enter the bios? this should be possible.

have you succeeded in booting anything on this machine? maybe it's just f**ked?

It appears you're trying to boot a fairly new Puppy variant - I see 5.1 on the screen image. However, it appears you've got a rather old laptop with relatively little RAM. It might be as simple as needing more RAM. Have you tried booting an older Puppy (say Puppy 2.x)?

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Searching This

finding this

Browser was made in 2009. So it is not so recent. But it should boot OK.

Have you tried making and using a PLOP Cd

use unetbootin in your Mint Dell 530 to make a puppy live usb (Browser) and see if no glitches happen?
It will save you bucks in the long run. If your Toshiba has a floppy drive. You can make a plop floppy instead.
i guess you got yours from here http://puppylinux.org/wikka/BrowserLinux

It was how I used to roll on my IBM 390E linux installs.
Because the cdrom drive could be flaky at times when it came to booting a operating system from a cold start.

edit: If you install browser linux. Live with the default firefox. The libs in Browser are old and New Browser installs won't launch because of them. RockDoctors suggestion of using top ten 2.14x is a good one. Here is the link. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=42553

The thread is 334 pages long. Looks like someone likes it.

Here is one I like for old gear myself.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...rk-4175500941/

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi, Everyone,

Thank you very much for introducing me to Puppy Linux 2.14x-top10. I like its implementation of the ps command a lot as it lets me see all the active processes at the same and in the same window.

I burned a CD with the iso and tried to use it to boot up my sick Toshiba laptop to no avail. Browser Linux has been a great tool for troubleshooting my three pre-2005 Linux desktops, especially their hardware.

I need you folks' help in interpreting a Browser Linux (BL) booting error message. Currently I am trying to track down a hardware problem in my HP desktop using BL as a tool. This desktop refuses to boot any live Linux distro disk. BL persistently gets stuck on the following line:

Performing a 'switch-root' to the layered filesystem --Kernel panic --not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

By the way, I've tested the machine's 2Gb RAM and found it to be good. Thanks very much again.

Julianvb