hard drive failing or incorrectly connected?

[broecher]

deleted

[broecher]

Good point - definitely not going to make them use a laptop that takes that long to boot. Will have to see if this install ends, and then try a few boots. It's moving really slow right now but that could be because I opted to use a 12.04 alternate install CD.

It seems like an OK machine if I could just get this hard drive problem resolved. This is one of those just for fun projects where I'm tyring to make something out of nothing.... 512mb ram, pentium 3, battery lasts at least 30 minutes - haven't run it dead yet, keys and pad work well. I thought it was worth the $5 I paid, and the $10 for the hard drive hehe

Thanks for all the advice!