Hi

First of all, hi. Another newbie to the linux and slackware world So nice to meet u all

There's 2 problems i've encountered during the installation. I run the install on a Acer 4520 laptop, with amd-x2 2.0ghz, geforce 7000m

1. When i boot the slackware 12.0 dvd, it hangs halfway while booting the kernel, particularly at

ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing

As i hit the power button once, the booting resumes back.Is there any way to fix this?


2.During the cfdisk partition, it only shows the free disk space of 4.6gb. Although i have windows XP installed in a different partition and another total unpartitioned space of 15gb.

As for fdisk /dev/hda....it stated that there isnt any valid DOS partition table.

Any idea bout this?

Thanks alot

1) For your first issue try entering this where it says 'boot:'
then hit <Enter>, if that still does not work try one of the following instead of 'noioapic':
nolapic
noapic
noacpi

2) I think it's not detecting the HDD, it's probably detecting the DVD only. Try #1 above and see if that helps with this problem too.

Thanks for the feedback

First issue was solved.

But the second issue still remains
I tried using all 4 of the inputs but cfdisk still couldnt detect my partitions.

By 'all four of the inputs' I assume you mean /dev/hd{a,b,c,d}? It's possible your disk(s) is/are scsi - try /dev/sd{a,b,c,d}. Also, you can try fdisk - it's not as twitchy as cfdisk can be. And, lastly, you can get a 'DOS can't boot this' type warning when you make a dedicated Linux disk with no 'active' partition but that canbe ignored - though this doesn't sound like what you're getting - I'm just saying that warnings can be warnings and not fatal errors, just in case.

'cfdisk' typically detects the drive without any parameters or options, just run 'cfdisk'.

What kind of HDD do you have ? As digiot said, it may be /dev/sda instead of /dev/hda.

I've tried fdisk /dev/sda(or b,c,d). Still can't be done

I'm using a Hitachi HDD

Ok, I found the laptop, looks like it has a SATA HDD, but it doesn't seem to mention what SATA controller you have.

I wonder, can you run 'lspci' and take a look at what it says, it should say something about a SATA controller, like which one you have. (I hope this command works from the install DVD)

From where do i run the lspci command?
i tried it at the 'root@slackware:/#' and it says not found

Try booting into a live CD and running it.

It didnt list out any SATA controller related.
Mostly are stuffs like RAM memory, USB controller, IDE interface...All are labelled as nVidia Corporation and Unknown Device.

Btw, i ran this console from the Slax livecd

That is not good, if it says 'Unknown Device' that means that particular component is not detected properly, probably because no drivers exist for running it.

What are your BIOS settings concerning SATA ? Is it set up to use IDE or AHCI, etc.

Are you using the default BIOS settings ?

Yeah, default BIOS settings with SATA set to IDE.
But tried changing it to AHCI, doesnt make any difference from what i see

From the slax livecd, most of the hardware are labelled as unknown device

Hi,
Could you try another Livecd? Try Knoppix and see if everything is recognized. Accelerated Knoppix is another to check out. AK does some hardware handling differently than KNOPPIX.

Make sure to select the proper boot for each. Check the alternate screens at boot, F1, F2 and F3. Change your BIOS settings to 'AHCI' and test. You can then do the 'lspci -vv' from a console. Post the relevant portion(s) so we can diagnose.

These links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links' .

This is not good, it seems one of the controllers may not be supported at all by Linux. As onebuck suggests try some live CDs and see if they can detect it properly, if not maybe try to find out what SATA/AHCI controller this laptop has, then we can check if it's supported or not.

Alright, i'll try with other livecds for the time being

But arent there any other ways to identify the SATA controller? Like thru Windows XP or somethin