I had a compaq presario 1020 laptop given to me.When it boots it says no os found.I thought no problem I'll toss in a linux distro and see what happens.Well not much does happen.
When i try a live cd(ubuntu,underground,suse,linare,knoppix,whax)it starts to load and when it gets to:
RAMDISK: compressed image found at block 0
It quits and wont go any further?
When I try to do a full install with any distro sometimes I get to the same spot and it hangs.Sometimes the installer gets to the point where it tries to mount the file system(3 or 4 times)fails then quits.
Would this indicate a bad hd maybe or another hardware issue?
Thanks for any info.

Yes, that sounds like a bad hd or controller to me (or memory).

Here's what I'd do.

Get a copy of tomsrtbt on a floppy and see if you can boot that. If successful, run fdisk and see what the drive looks like. Ordinarily I'd warn you to be careful, but in this case, I don't think you can make things worse.

If tom's won't boot, try finding a distro with memtest (Knoppix has it, just say memtest at the boot prompt) and see what that says.

If none of the above works, I would cut my losses and toss the thing.

Good luck!
http://www.toms.net/rb/ http://www.knoppix.org/

I made a toms floppy and it loaded but fdisk was unable to open the drive.Sound like a bad drive?
I have noticed lately during booting the hd sounds like someone is banging a marble against the inside of the case......not good.Anyway maybe I can rob the ram for my antique ascentia(ast) laptop my 9 yr old plays with.

A few of my inlaws have hp pavilion desktops I have worked on in the past.Any box that takes 8 cd's just to load drivers and winxp is a big stinking pile imo.

I think I'll take great joy in cannibalizing then oval filing whats left of a hp product .
I do have a hp printer for my system and it works really well for $40.Hp must sub out the production of the printers to another company lol.
Thanks for the info and the toms utility poly!

Yes, I agree. It is most likely just a bad hd and not worth replacing.

Glad that helped! Toms has bailed me out more than once. It is a really great little distro! It can be used to get a net install started on machines that can only boot a floppy.

best,
Daniel