OK I want to migrate back to linux, tried Mandriva (yuck-win clone and free for a price). Got UBUNTU - nice warm feeling, works great but want more. Buddy said get Slackware, I did! it will install fine in my Compaq Presario V2000 but that's not the computer I want it in. I want it in my HP Paviloin ze1210, the cd runs and goes to boot then says not a boot cd and exits to the HP startup page and tries to boot and exits and tries to boot and exits, I guess you get the picture. I am unable to make a bootable floppy for some reason and I tried everything my bespectacled haed could drum up including hopping around on one foot with my fingers in my ears...help me please. I promise to be greatful.

ken

Found this on another site, smart boot manager, has got me out of these situations before, my laptop has a flaky bios that doesn't always like self booting disks.

Samac

Hello

Try updating your bios i.e. flash it. I just bought for a cheap price a great hp omnibook xe3 gf and had the same trouble putting my slack on it. I flashed the bios and no worries anymore mate.

take care, u/ll love slack

fibster

Well the SBM was not the trick. Solved another problem though. I will try to see if there is an updated bios for the thing and give it a go. I remember years ago when we could do low and high level formats, pretty sure that would fix my problem seems that HP has a neat little trick for the 1st sector, kinda like the old compaqs.

ken

Updated the bios and no luck. Slackware 11 cd will not start in the HP laptop so went to create a boot floppy. For some reason UBUNTU will read and write to the floppy ( /dev/sda ) but it absolutely refuses to format a disk, error returned is "Could not determine current floppy geometry." Tried everything I could think of. So installed Slackware 11 on my other laptop (Compaq Presario V2000) and it went smooth as silk. Great, so now I can create the boot floppy from here, well think again, this machine can't find the USB floppy so did the "dmesg | grep USB" thing and it was listed as SCSI1. I just do not know where to go from here. What I want is a ext2 formatted boot disk to see if I can install Slackware 11 on the hp pavilion ze1210 as I have a dedicated use for that old laptop (broken battery charger, touchpad, modem) but still an ideal computer for my ham radio station. BTW: Tried the DOS route and the disk returned a bad kernel msg and aborted.

ken

I thought it was me-that I must be doing something wrong-but I also have a ze1210 and have the EXACT same problem. It also happened to me with another release of linux. It appears we may be stuck using Ubuntu unless somebody comes up with an answer. Right now I have quite a few "coasters" where I tried re-burning the install disks.



tharse

Hi Tharse,

I was forced to give up after the 5th distro. Something in the MB hardware I suspect. Deleted and Low then high formatted the disk still no good so it's definately not a software issue. You could do a lot worse tham UBUNTU it's a nice distro. I went back to xp but had to uninstall and message some services to keep from locking up. I do run UNBUNTU from the cd.

Ken