Cannot complete Linux Install
 

I have tried to install about 4 to 5 different versions of Linux from Mandrake to Freespire, all with the same result. When at the install screen I press enter... this causes the system to reboot and bring me back to the original install screen that I was on. Since this has failed on so many different versions, I'm guessing that it might be a hardware conflict?

I'm running on a Compaq Presario. Don't know the brand of the primary drive, but the slave is a Western Digital Caviar drive. It's got 2 gig of memory installed plus a pci video card that has 256 MB on it. On the primary hard drive I am running Windows XP (trying to get rid of it by going to Linux). My monitor is a Compaq 7600. Hope that this is enough info, if not just ask me some more questions.

Thanks for trying to help. I really appreciate it!

I don't know about Mandrake, but SuSE 10.1 is a good, solid release with a few porblems that are easy to overcome. Also, there is Red Hat if you are willing to spend around $50 on it(unless you know some people.)

Without more specific information it's hard to know what to suggest. Can you provide a more detailed description of what happens? Any error messages would be good.

Do you have luck with live CDs like Knoppix or the Ubuntu Live CD?

If you can boot into Knoppix or the Ubuntu Live CD it should be possible to diagnose potential problems, such as the hard disk not being recognised by the kernel.

For example this command, when run in a terminal, should provide output which will show you if an IDE hard disk is detected:

Here's the output I get, but yours will almost certainly be different:

If you're using the Ubuntu live CD, there is a nice graphical hardware tool: System [menu] -> Administration -> Device Manager. Where you should be able to see what hardware has been detected.

Hail
are you running PATA drives, because i had the same type of thing happen. I fixed it by disconnecting all drives but the one i was installing linux to and connected them after linux was installed. Hope this helps

Maybe you should take out the CD when you're done installing :p Otherwise if you have your BIOS set to boot from CD, that's exactly what it's going to do- boot you right back into the installer.