Numerous rebooting distro attempts have failed
 

I have a Compaq V2000 laptop, Mobile AMD Sempron Processor 3000+, 1.79GH, 1.12 GB Ram using Windows XP.
It would not accept my futile attempts at USB Flash boot.
So I went to CD and I had no problem booting up Ubuntu, Lucid and Wary Puppy and MacPup.
However when I tried rebooting them I was met with failure.
I even tried. on a second burning to CD of MacPup using 4x with no luck in rebooting.
I have no idea why I can;t reboot as I set the boot order to CD on my laptop and it does not boot up each time I've tried doing restart and pressing F10 also tried ESC, F1 and F2 it always boots up Windows XP instead.
Hellllp!

You have to get into your BIOS and change the boot order.
1. CDROM
2. HD

or ideally if you have the option
1. cdrom
2. usb
3. hd


On most linux cds there is a dosutils directory, which might have loadlin.exe. Loadlin is a linux loader from dos. Best to boot to dos (F8 & command prompt) and then run loadlin with the correct arguments. Loadlin /? for that.

Booting from USB can require black magic on some systems, so it is not surprising that you are having problems. Newer systems generally do better booting from USB, but it is still not a slam-dunk that it will work.
Are you saying that the FIRST boot from CD works fine, but the SECOND boot from the same CD fails? Or did you install to your harddisk after that first boot, and the second boot attempt is from harddisk (not from CD), and that is what is failing?
Are you saying that it is sometimes, but not always, recognizing the CD during boot and thus falling back to harddrive boot intermittantly? Possibly a bad CD? Possibly a bad optical drive? Maybe just some dust on the lens of the optical drive causing intermittant read problems?

Yes, the first boot works fine but the second boot from the same CD fails.

Numerous rebooting distro attempts have failed
 

Yeah I suggest booting from CD, then installing it to HDD. Once this is done, it will spit the CD out of the drive at which point you remove it and restart the computer. Hopefully then you'll see LILO or GRUB where you can choose your OS.

Numerous rebooting distro attempts have failed
 

Just make sure to back up your important files to an external storage device first, in case you overwrite XP by accident or something!

Can you try booting these CD's from a different computer to see if they boot consistantly and reliably? I'm thinking you have a problem with your drive.

Thanks for all the help everyone. Will give it a try.

Thank you haerting, business kid, and Drumachine for all your help.

Yesterday I took a fresh CD stuck it in the drive when Burncd called for it and burned, one more time, the MacPup ISO. I set the boot order to CD drive hit f10 to save and waited for the restart. When it restarted I entered MacPup hard drive. when it came up on the screen. And it booted up just fine. After using simple network setup up the internet connection successfully I exited to prompt and followed the steps to install to HD.
Then I was instructed to enter "xorg...." (I'm sorry I can't remember how to spell that now .I did spell it correctly when I entered it..please remember I am a newbie) and all of a sudden the screen started scrolling bad page, bad page, bad p....and then the screen froze and I did a manual power shut down of my laptop. I powered it up and it came up with Windows XP.

I read somewhere that there are two kinds of newbies. Those Linux newbies who are tech savy in Windows, and, or IOS. And then there are the Linux newbies who are not tech savy. I am a member of the latter group.
For a long time I was given to understand that Linux was strictly for Geeks.
A month or so ago when I got word that Windows XP would no longer be supported ( where have I been?) by Microsoft and was vulnerable with security that leaked like a sieve and it was indicated that Linux was the most secure OS out there I did a little online exploring and after determining what distributions were, reading reviews, and such I managed to boot up ubuntu. I really liked it but couldn't figure out how to connect to the internet. So I booted up Puppy distros should have used simple network set up rather than the other ones.
But here I am rambling on.
Despite all my bumbling efforts in booting up and such I am still fascinated with Linux...all the amazing distros available...the openess and community involvement..the incredible support like the kind people who are willing to help newbies like me like you folks on this forum and the refreshing concept of Linux that is such a welcome departure from the control policies of Cupertino and Redmond . I have both a Mac desktop and my PC laptop.

I am impressed with the how fast my firnerkt sluggish old PC laptop has become while checking out the various distros. A lot of fun and for the most part the desktops are pretty intuive for the basic stuff...internet, files, software etc. I really like Linux but I confess..I am intimidated by the the language and the text driven commands. And I have a feeling much of the time in trying to figure out where I'm going in trying to understand Linux that I am in way over my head.

All I want from Linux is to be able to surf the net, YouTube, email a bit and use a word processor now and then. I think with a bit more trial and error and your help I am on the verge of making this happen.
Thanks for reading this.
Getting back to the "bad page" thing I mentioned a few paragraphs ago ....where did I go wrong?

as your laptop is from 2005, odds are high that it will never boot from USB.its typically F12 or Del to get to the boot loader menu outside of the BIOS.

Many systems do blast through the POST so fast it is hard to get to the boot loader. If that happens, and it will more then not it sounds, just ctrl+alt+del to restart the computer before XP has a chance to fully load. DO KEEP IN MIND this is not healthy for XP and can run the risk of data corruption as well as OS corruption.

What you may wish to do instead is allow for XP for fully load, power down, do not restart. then manually hit the power button and start spamming the F12/F2/Del keys in hopes of catching the boot loader screen.

Odd that changing your BIOS to load CDRom first is not working, but that could just be the BIOS being flaky. You are running a Compaq after all. they are not known for quality.

This is an unfortunate yet *extremely* common phenomenon!

I think the only thing which makes it intimidating is you aren't given all possible options in front of you. For example, with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) one has an array or icons and buttons in front them, it's just a case of clicking on the most useful looking one.

With a text-based interface, you are seldom given this obvious choice, instead just a blinking cursor... BUT the upside is that you can get a lot of things done just by typing one sentence. And this is why the command line interface is so popular.

The best thing to keep in mind is that a GNU/Linux operating system is just a collection of programs, which have been installed one after the other, on top of the central program: the Linux kernel. Each one of these programs has been developed by a separate group of people (normally) and each one of these programs normally have their own websites, which normally contain a .pdf or html manual explaining all the commands within their program.

All you have to bear in mind is whenever you type in a command on the command line, the first word is almost always the name of the program - typing "info" (without quotes) into the command line will show you a huge ream of such programs which you can browse through if you have some spare time. These info documents really took the intimidation out of Linux, I found. (Here is the manual for the info program itself (yes I know, it's all getting a bit meta here): http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/.../info/info.pdf).

I think the first info manual to read through thoroughly is BASH. This probably answers a huge number of questions you may have (it certainly did for me).

Anyway, enough of MY rambling (I just really wish someone had explained the previous paragraphs to me when I first started).

My guess as to the cause of your problem (and I mean *guess* - this is a bit alien to me) is due to a buggy BIOS. I suggest updating your BIOS firmware, if possible (but backup your data first!) by visiting the manufacturer of your motherboard's website and finding your way to their downloads section. If this still doesn't help I would try Debian. This has many, many CDs you can install, full of packages, which should contain any drivers you need.

Hope that helps.

lleb and Drumachine many thanks.

Yeah, iileb, probably I need a better "older" laptop than this Compaq. Think I'll check out ebay and craigslist and see what I can find. Thanks for your help.

Drumachine really nice of you to present that info manual. i skimmed through the "Getting Started" part and plan to delve into it further when I can find some extended time. Thanks

if the hardware works, then really no reason to replace it, but if you are looking for a new laptop you might consider the Asus K55A line of laptops. If you keep your eye out for a refurbished one you can pick one up for under $400 and they handle Fedora 18/19 out of the box with next to zero hardware issues.

I state next to zero as I do have one that for some reason is having some odd conflicts with the asus_nb module for the multimedia function keys (the screen brightness and volume control) . mind you i own 3 of these now and they are fast, light weight, and rock solid.

Good to know. Thanks lleb.