Hi All,

I was hoping to install a small size linux distribution to an old Toshiba laptop. However, all of the installation CD's I've tried so far just halt at the ISOLINUX screen when first starting the install. Does anyone know why this might be?

Thanks.

It might help if you told us what distro you were trying to install.
jdk

And the model number and hardware specifications for the laptop...

I've tried quite a few. Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint (all LXDE), Debian, Slitaz. All halt at exactly the same point.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite Pro M40. It's a Celeron M 1.5GHz with 2GB RAM.

Have I got this right: it's not the installation process that fails, but the boot of the live disk, which loads the kernel and stops?

My first thought was that your Pentium M was one of the early models without pae support, but the Toshiba M40 is supposed to have it. You could try Bodhi: if that boots, then you do lack pae support.

It stops before the menu appears offering to boot to whichever distro.

I've tried Bodhi, same thing with that.

If I get old distribution (i.e. Mint 11), that worked fine.

Any ideas?

As a rescue disk i use Knoppix
never had it not boot
some VGA issues in having to manually set the size and bit (800x600x 16 bit )

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

but if you want to INSTALL a os , then why use a "live cd "

2 gig's of ram is enough for fedora
but i do NOT , I repeat DO NOT recommend fedora to "new to linux users" !!!!



A lot of people like Linux Mint
use a "light" desktop like xfce
http://www.linuxmint.com/
-- the 32 bit xfce version --
http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=142

Is a liveCD not the main way these distributions are provided for installation now? The laptop does not support boot from USB so I can't use that.

I use Fedora 18 on my desktop, I have no problems with that.

I'll give Knoppix a try.

One thing that we can now eliminate is the kernel version. Mint 11 and Slitaz both have 2.6 and you say that one worked and the other didn't.

You could try Puppy 5.7 in the retro version, intended for older computers.

It's a long shot, but there might be a problem with the optical drive.

Have you tried booting from a USB stick using something like unetbootin.

Make sure you're running the right install disc. Isn't the celeron a 32 bit chipset, so a 64bit installer will likely fail, or not.

If you burn an optical disc, make sure you have the full image before burning. And verify the burn, k3b has a verify check box. I've had blank media that were almost transparent after the burn, and basically useless. The burn didn't fail, but I didn't verify, and the result was basically non-existent.

If you need exotic network drivers, you can install linux inside of linux. And then clone that to a destination, or do that type of install at the location. You can start this type of install from a liveCD / liveDVD or any bootable linux you have. It's not noob friendly, but it's pretty simple if you know your way around.

http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...apds03.html.en

That link lacks a few of the administration things that a traditional installer does on the first pass. Like setting a root password, and adding a user, plus other things. But it's good enough to get you to the apt-get install steps while you're in a working linux with a usable network configuration.

that almost sounds like coping the iso to the dvd instead of burning the image

when you ( on windows [xp,vista,7] ) open the files on the cd
is there only one file with an iso file extention
or
are there many files and folders

Hi,

All the installation CD's are fine. They all work on a different machine. All the ISO's have been downloaded in 32bit.

Like I stated above, it appears to be something to do with newer versions of each distribution. I'm not sure what or how to find out (it fails so early in the process).

I've downloaded ArchLinux and installed this with no problems. Configured LXDE and it's all working surprisingly well. I would really like to find out why these others will not install though! Does anyone have any suggestions how I can start to find out?

You could check the forums for the distro in question. You're probably not the only one with the issue. If it doesn't work as supplied, any fix will likely be a work around. Or a new release that addesses the issue. In the early 00s install discs would fail when they probed my PCMCIA chipset on my laptop, but installed on the desktop without a hitch. It could be anything, and unless you try to do the install in a virtual environment there's really no logical way to debug why it fails. There could be a new firmware for your motherboard and if you install it, that issue goes away. Or other hardware issues.