OK this is the strangest thing. When I try to install the OSes listed in the title, they would freeze during the install. If I go into the bios/cmos and switch to failsafe theyll install but WinXP,Win2K,MDK,Knoppix wont boot to the desktop.

Now the wierd thing is, other OSes like Slackware,Gentoo,Fedora,SUSE,win98 install without a hitch.

Whats going on?

"Whats going on?"

When an OS supports a piece of hardware it has to support it twice, once to recognize the hardware during the install in order to configure it into the installed system and a second time in the installed system to actually use the hardware. My guess is that you have a piece of hardware that is supported by some OS and not others. And the hardware may have install support but not run support or vice versa.

You could try to isolate the problem device by removing your devices one by one and trying out the various operating systems. Of course, something essential like memory cannot be tested this way.

___________________________________
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Steve Stites

Hmmm...well its been running fine for a good 1yr before this started to happen. The only thing that I changed was the monitor. Could a monitor be the cause?

Another way of finding out is when the OS is being installed or booting up, and when the "boot:" prompt pauses to give the user a chance to enter kernel commands, linux noauto, or knoppix noauto, could be entered.
Then when the system is completely booted up, manually mount the hard drives and items that were not scanned in advance. If one of them resists usage, then the culprit has been discovered.

Is your system still under warranty? Well then, don't be so lazy and take it back.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

But couldn't you have put in your contribution and been more helpful?

I know this is a very old thread but I'm having the same problem with a 1999-vintage eMachine (433 MHz Celeron w/192 MB RAM). I've been running Win98, Red Hat, & Slackware on it over the years, but it won't install PCLinuxOS or Fedora 5 without freezing during install. Slackware 10.2 installed without issue and runs perfectly.

Another thing I found out is that PCLinuxOS 0.93-Big Daddy runs perfectly from the CD, but crashes while installing on the Hard Drive.

The only thing I can think of that would cause it is that Slackware, Win98, and older Red Hats use a text-based install (at least initially in Win98), while PCLinuxOS and Fedora use a full GUI-based install. Too much of a load on the processor causing it to overheat? It could be another hardware problem that could be causing this extra load as well.