Hello.

I'm trying to install Linux on my laptop after a lengthy stint into Windows. I don't know much about Linux but enough to get around, and enough to figure things out for the most part.

Anyway, I tried installing Ubuntu first, and during the install I began receiving the message:

"[#####.######] hub 1:0-1:0 over-current charge on port 1"

This scrolls over and over again which holds up the installation process. It likewise did this with an old copy of Redhat, an old copy of Mandrake, and Gentoo.

A Google search shows me that this is something to do with the USB ports, which I am aware of the fact that they don't work. Someone jammed a USB flash drive upside down into the drive about a year ago, and they haven't worked since.

Anyway, I can't shut off the USB ports in the BIOS because it's not an option, and none of the recovery modes seem to work. Does anyone know how I can get around this?

Thanks for your help in advance!

When you boot linux, the boot loader passes some options to the kernel. If you haven't already, I think you should try passing "nousb" to the kernel when the installer begins. I'm not sure exactly how this will be done on those distributions, but you could try one of the following:

nousb
linux nousb
vmlinuz nousb
linux26 nousb

One of these might work. If not, hopefully you can find out how your distro's install CD's boot loader want the options.

Check my page at http://users.utu.fi/sjsepp/linuxcompaqarmada100s.html

I've had the same problem with my Compaq Armada 100s, even though I could boot into the system and installing FreeBSD 5.4 did make USB fully functional.

You could also try to tinker with your usb port's connectors to see if you can mend them - at least to a degree that you can get rid of the errors.

Well hey I got it to work! Thanks guys!

What I did was just ignore the messages. Sounds weird, especially since they took up the whole screen, but I just guessed what message was up on the screen behind all the error messages and suddenly the laptop rebooted and the GUI started to pop up!

Yay!