Dell Inspiron 8600
Distro I'm installing: Zorin 9 Core

The installation (from .iso CD) took a very long time, but at the last action (Installation complete - Restart your computer) I realized I hadn't taken the .iso installation disk out of the drive and quickly did that, during the first seconds of the restart. Chances are I would have gotten this screen anyway, but instantly a black screen appeared with Kernel panic information.

That's bad enough, but the worst part of this is that the machine will not shut down, not even with holding the power button down for 15 seconds. Caps-lock and number-lock keys, plus one other, are flashing.

I've tried:
CTRL+ALT+DEL (once, and 3 times in succession)
CTRL+ALT
ALT+right arrow key (repeatedly)

I'm new to Linux so the last two are things I looked up, trying to get onto the console so I can type some sort of command to reboot or shut down. I don't even know what that would be. But my machine has been running like this for about 1.5 hours now.

On my own, the only thing I can come up with is to disconnect the power and just let it run until the battery dies. That's not anything I want to do, though. I'd rather fix what's wrong.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

(I can upload a pic of the detailed "panic" information if you need. This is a non-PAE CPU, so I added "forcepae" to the information you see when you hit F6 at the beginning of the install. It proceeded with the installation just fine, so I figured that part was resolved.)

Thanks!
Lauren

I would hold the power button down for longer (at least 30 seconds to a minute) and, if that didn't work, remove the battery and power lead, then hold down the power button for about a minute, then put the battery back, plug the power back in and power back on.

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Thanks for your reply, 273 ~ Since this is an older laptop and does not have a solid state drive, plus the hard drive appears to be spinning without ceasing, wouldn't turning it over to open the battery compartment risk damaging the HD?

I tried holding the power button down for .5 - 1 minute as you suggested and that didn't work. Could it hurt anything if I just let the battery run completely down and then disconnecting the power lead? I'd let it charge back up to at least 50% before I tried to start it again -- after doing what you suggest.

And I really do appreciate you getting back to me. It's been horrible just sitting here while it gets hotter and hotter.

Don't let the battery run down as that will just be bad for the battery. Remove the battery and power.
The hard drive will not be damaged -- it's been over 20 years since hard drives were damaged by the power being cut.

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I wasn't worried about the HD being damaged by the power being cut, but by the read/write head dinging into the drive if I turned it upside down while the drive was running. I know that's not an issue with SSDs, but I thought that older drives were susceptible.

Do you know anything about the Kernel panic issue? And would it help if I posted a pic of the full screen error message?

If the machine is frozen the panic displayed is irrelevant -- there is no way of resetting without powering off and back on.
Two things:
1) It isn't necessary to turn the device over to remove the battery -- it's just a case of sliding some clips open.
2) gradually turning a computer with a spinning hard drive over is not likely to cause any issues to the hard drive as long as the rate of turning is small compared to the rate of hard drive spin -- meaning you can do so carefully with no issues.

Really, just power it off and back on already.

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I should have been clearer in that I was definitely going to do what you said. And, I did. It booted up into Zorin without a problem. So far, so good. Should I start a new thread if I run into Kernel panic issues again, or keep them here? I'd like to know in advance how to sort this out. At least I know how what to do if it freezes on restart again. Thanks a million for your help.

Sorry, I was posting quickly so didn't expand upon what I meant. I would forget about the panic for now as the panic was probably due to the timing of your removing the install disc.
If you do have any kernel panics in future, which seems unlikely to me, then it's probably better to start a new thread as the cause will likely not be the same thing.

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Thanks, again, 273! So far, it looks like you're right. I've had no recurrences of the panic screen. I really appreciate your help with this as I was a bit desperate. And, by the way, I find this hilarious: "He took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots."

You're welcome -- all kinds of errors come up when you're messing around installing and changing boot media.
The quote is from William Gibson, one of my favourite authors, and is a kind of mantra a character uses to fend off panic attacks -- try to remind myself of the need to calm down and think.

Oh, might it be worth marking this thread as solved, DGLauren?

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Zorin is at 12.1, why 9? Is it even supported any more?

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Funny you should ask that. I spent my last five minutes on this thread the other night trying to figure out exactly how to do that. I know it's one of those "if it was a snake it would have bitten me" things, but I still can't find it.

There is a link to mark as read. I know it took me a few times to find it.

Zorin 9 is the last version with long term support, prior to 12. I've read that it's a better choice for older machines/older hardware and doesn't require much in the way of resources. I plan to put 12.1 on my own main machine in dual-boot with Windows 10, but this set-up is to show to friends I have that still hate to part with XP and also want to keep their old machines going as long as possible.

There is a group of die-hard XP lovers out there that have created their own unofficial XP Service Pack 4, but it looks a whole lot more complicated for someone like me than switching to Linux does. Eventually, I hope to convert the version of XP that's on this old Dell to that unofficial SP4 and have that in a dual-boot system with Zorin. Maybe by the time Zorin 9's LTS runs out, and if 12 won't run on those ancient machines, maybe THEN they'll be willing to get new computers, lol.

Thanks for your question and for responding.