Install Mint on old laptop
 

I have a Windows XP laptop. I ran DBaN on it.

I have created 2 DVDs -- one of Mint Mate, and another of Lununtu. Both stop with a "can't mount fs..." error. I've searched the error and found many references, but I don't understand any of the solutions.

Any direction would be appreciated.

Thanks, Craig.

Grab your phone and take a photo of the error screen. Either post it here or online somewhere and post a link to it.

Screenshot
 

I've encountered this error before but this is not distro specific. Boot GParted Live and delete and existing partitions on /dev/sda (not /dev/sdb, if you are using a USB to do this) and then install the distro(s) of your choice.

That's a kernel oops. Not good.

How did you run dban ?. If from a USB/CD, get another distro rather than a Ubuntu derivative and see if that boots - maybe Fedora.

While installing Fedora:

"Oh no! Something has gone wrong.
A problem has occurred and the system can't recover.
Please log out and try again."

I tried again in troubleshooting mode using basic graphics mode. Same results.

There must be some corruption in this particular computer.

Thanks for all your help.

Craig.

Do any of the DVDs run in liveCD mode ("try it" mode rather than install) ?. If so, open a terminal and run these commandsPost all the output.

I tried to run Lubuntu from the DVD rather than installing it and received the "can't post..." error. Also, the ISO I used of Fedora tried to run Fedora from the DVD when I received the "On no!" error.

Hi Craig, welcome to the forum :)

Are you trying to boot the OS's live or are is one (or both) already installed on the hard drove? If the former (especially,) did you verify the integrity of your copies using MD5? You can find a Windows utility for doing this here, although you will need to get the original values from where you downloaded the .iso files. Probably a long shot but to be on the safe side, you also might want to check out your memory using Memtest86+.

If the above checks out, you can try the solution mentioned here. :)

Regards...

You don't say what the model # of your laptop is, but from the screen shot it's a Toshiba. Is it 32 or 64 bit? And if it was running Windows XP...it's probably pretty old. If you got a 64 bit image, chances are it won't work on a 32 bit machine. And even if you got a 32 bit ISO, your system may not have enough RAM to run things, unless you get a 'smaller' version of Linux.

What are the specs on your system? Model? And what did you download for Mint/Fedora/Lubuntu? Does the architecture match?

I'd start at blaming the reading of the cd drive myself. Looking at your photo. 1st question is, did you md5sum check any of your linux isos before burning the cd. The cd burner may be no good also. Or. The read is off somehow.

I'd make sure I had a good cd. Does this xp computer have usb boot capable bios or is it too old? Is there a floppy drive in it also?

Edit: Be sure abnd answer others questions like Tbone before answering mine. Just good manners.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite M55-S-S1001 with a Celeron processor, 2 GbRAM, a 65Gb hard drive. All the CDs/DVDs I burned were 32Bit. Other media created on my desktop including after burning the Lubuntu and Mint and Fedora media performed just fine.

I now find that I probably fried the hard drive in the Toshiba. When running DBAN, after an hour I shut it down because it was taking too long. That's a no-no and almost certain disaster, which I find AFTER doing it!

I'm going to put another hard drive I have in the Toshiba tomorrow. Question: should I format the new drive before installing it the Toshiba? Can my Windows 10 desktop do the proper format on the new drive (it currently has a functioning install of Windows 7 on it).

I'm really impressed with the responses from this forum. Thanks, again.

Craig.

Hi Craig...

If necessary, you can install the hard drive in your Toshiba before wiping it. However, it's important that the copy of Windows 7 gets wiped either way, due to licensing requirements. :)

Regards...

You don't need to format it beforehand, since the installation of Linux will prompt/walk you through partitioning your drive. You can remove the Windows partition at that point, and the drive will be formatted by the installer.

Wrong. There is NOTHING with 'licensing requirements' that necessitates removal of Windows. One license was purchased either with the machine it came in, or with the CD/DVD/media, and one license is USED...please show us where this, somehow, violates a license agreement??? Craig is totally free to keep the Windows that he purchased on the drive he owns. If he wants to dual-boot the system, that also does not violate a license agreement.

Do not give bad or misleading advice, and do some amount of research first.

CraigH730,

Your old laptop is very low powered and needs something like antiX-16.1 which is based on Debian:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

Download the 32 bit antiX-16.1_386-full.iso:
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?tit...Page#Downloads

antiX-16 FAQs:
http://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/...FAQ/index.html

Forums:
http://antix.freeforums.org/index.php

To enable wifi after installation:

Menu > Control Centre > Network > Network Interfaces (ceni) > wlan0 > follow wizard and give SSID/network name and wifi password.

Puppy Linux is another alternative for old hardware:
http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%...%20Started.htm

NB You don't have to actually install Puppy (to hard disk) to use it.

Simply burn the ISO to CD/DVD and boot the PC or laptop with it.

Arch linux is another alternative for low powered systems. I use Arch linux with Openbox. Takes up about 120M of ram, 2G HDD space,.. running on an old Compaq laptop with a Celeron/1G ram from 2000 era.

https://www.archlinux.org/

I agree that Mint might be a bit much for that laptop. AntiX, MX, or Salix would be fine: I was using my Pentium III laptop with Salix only the other day.

Since the OP is a Linux beginner, I would definitely NOT recommend Arch. I've tried installing that twice, and succeeded once — and that took several hours.

PS It's just been reported that Arch is dropping 32-bit support.

Hey Craig - I played around alot with Linux on old hardware - another vote from me to stay away from Ubuntu, Mint or anything big and bloated.

I've had success with various flavours of Puppy in the past (the 2.14X "Classic Pup" line is particularly forgiving of old hardware ...) ;

... and Arch. With Arch, you may have to use an older ISO and be careful not to update your system indiscriminately - Arch as a rolling release will bring you right up to date with today's versions of all your packages, kernel and all ... David McCann's above comment concerning Arch is valid, however: it's not the type of distro that is easy on beginners - you must spend a lot of time reading up on things and you end up with a command line installation to build upon. Those are the reasons it is my preferred distro, although I admit it was not my first. I went through Ubuntu and Puppy before settling down with Arch ... ;-)

Although I have no experience with it myself, many others here recommend antiX for old hardware.

Have fun :-)