Hello,
I am experiencing problems trying to install ubuntu 7.10 on a laptop. When I try to install it using the live CD, it says it can't allocate resources to a PCI bus, and after that, I get a blank screen, both on the laptop and with a different screen.
Is the problem graphical? The videocard is an nvidia GEFORCE GO 7600. The laptop is an Asus A7V series laptop, with 2GB's of RAM.
I'm going to try the alternate installation CD, and if that doesn't work, I'll try a different version of Linux.
I've also tried the safe graphics mode, and I get the same thing.
Anybody have any ideas?
Edit-
Text mode seems to be working, I'll post back when the install finishes if the graphics adapter is compatible.

Ok, Ubuntu installed. However, it still gives me the same error message, and now it gives me a long beep after the error message, along with a blank screen. Any ideas?
Edit-
Well, apparently now it works, after the blank screen Ubuntu booted just fine.
Hopefully, Ubuntu won't give that long beep every time it boots (10 seconds long).
At least Ubuntu works.

If the text mode works fine, but problems start when X (grahpical server) is starting - when the screen flashes after the Ubuntu loading bar disappears - then it might be about your graphics card. It could be something else, but that's the first thing that I come up with..so, if you have an external graphics card (I don't know if that model is external or not, I'm not a graphics card expert, but I take it that it is), shut down, take the card off and try rebooting. Your machine should also have somekind of internal graphics chip, so X should still work - note that you may have to alter your Xorg configuration and change the video driver from whatever it is ('nv' or 'nvidia' probably) to 'vesa' (that's a "generic" driver that should work, altough with a low resolution). In text mode: log in, then
then scroll down to the driver line of the graphics card, which probably says the driver is 'nv', and change that to 'vesa'. Press ctrl+o to write changes, ctrl+x to exit, then start X or reboot ('sudo /sbin/reboot') and see if it works. If yes, it's about the graphics card - installing proprietary drivers may or may not help - or if it still argues, it's something else.

Note: it's not a bad idea to take backup of xorg.conf before editing it. If something fails, or if you just want to reasily revert changes, replace the edited file with the backup.
Make backup:
Afterwards put it back if needed:
The beep sounds bad. I hope it's nothing serious. You might want to try some other live-cds as well, Knoppix for a start, but I doubt if that helps..

Well, Ubuntu did boot fine. Unfortunately, I don't know if this will work on this laptop. For one thing, the wireless network doesn't seem to be working. I enter the authentication key, but it doesn't seem to recognize it correctly (the router). Also, when I'm entering the wireless key, the computer seems to "lock up", for lack of a better term, and ubuntu doesn't want to start up Open Office.
Now there is plenty of RAM, is it possible that Ubuntu uses more than 2GB of RAM?
I'll also run a quick memory test.
I'll try the hard line method for the internet, hopefully, that'll work.
Note-I'm dual booting Vista and Ubuntu, if that may cause any conflicts, I don't know.

Well, I installed updates for Ubuntu, and now the wireless will connect (had to use wired for net access before).
Unfortunately, Ubuntu still seems to run very, very slow. For example, when I try to start the synaptic package manager, it won't work. It's like there are too many trying to load at once.
Also, I tried to install a game, and it installed (with Add/Remove Programs) and the game starts, but it goes gray after I tried running it (locks up, I take it).
Overall, Ubuntu works very slow, while Vista works as good, if not faster (due to the smaller parition, IMO).
Anybody have any ideas as to what the problem is?
The laptop does have a Turion 64 x2 CPU, which is 64 bit, while the OS is only 32-bit. That shouldn't cause problems, but perhaps it is?
Compiz is installed, but I'm not sure if it is enabled, should I disable it?

Are you using the restricted driver for your nvidia graphics card? I suspect that for almost all graphical games you certainly want to install the binary nvidia accelerated driver. You can verify it is installed by going to System - Administration - Restricted Drivers Manager.

I would also suggest that you initially turn off all desktop effects until you are sure everything else is working correctly. Go to System - Preferences - Appearance and select the Visual Effects tab. Set to None to turn it off for now.

Bob

I do have the restricted driver installed. Also, now Ubuntu's interface is working properly, had to disable Compiz.
Anyways, now I'm moving on to the beep problem. I tried disabling PCMIA, but there are no PCMIA slots in the laptop, there is an Express Card instead (considering PCMIA is replaced by Express Card, not much surprise there). There is also no PC Speaker, at least one that showed up in ALSA.
So, how do I disable the sound? I muted everything, but it isn't working.
I tried the editing of the PCMIA file in this thread, but to no avail. So, my guess is that I edited the wrong file, due to no PCMIA, and possibly no system speaker. So, what file do I need to edit (potentially).
Here are the specs on the Asus laptop-
http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...14&modelmenu=2
I did upgrade the memory to 2 GB's, also.
If anybody has any ideas as to what the problem might be, please post. I may try a different version of Linux (Mandriva 2008), to see if that's the problem, or perhaps the 32 bit version of Ubuntu.

Well, when I installed Mandriva 2008, the beep went away.
So, that leaves possible culprits.
1) GNOME
2) 64-bit edition
3) Kernel Version