timbledum
September 15th, 2009, 12:41 PM
Okay so here goes.
I have dabbled with a bit of linux on virtual machines and live cds before, and have finally gotten a hold of one of my buddies ageing laptop to... experiment on. Initially my mandate was purely to wipe the password on xp that he had forgotten, however this was quickly accomplished with the help of "Offline NT Password & Registry Editor". I quickly realised that the laptop was only marginally capable of xp and needed a good linux distro on it to get it flying. The plan was to set up a duel boot, get my mate to try both, and wait for him to revert to ubuntu when xp slows right down.
A good plan, with a fatal flaw.
The facts:
Compaq Presario V2000
224 ram
Average condition.
Capable CPU, however in XP the graphics card in devices came up with an error. Shouldnt be a problem methinks.
40 g ntfs harddrive with about 6g full. (model st94019a)
--------------
Ive just read through this and its a bit wordy so Ill quickly summarise the next few paragraphs
Tried installing with ubuntu, puppy linux and finally xubuntu, seems to freeze/stall just after loading the partition editor without actually entering. Determined that this is because the installer cannot mount the internal harddrive for whatever reason. Xp runs fine.
--------------
I began with trying vanilla ubuntu as I already had a cd lying around, however it took aaaaaages to get around. Obviously there wasn't enough ram to run the live cd so I quickly gave up on the idea when parts of the interface started shutting down.
Second go, an old version of puppy linux. Bad idea. This distro was clearly not designed to be installed on harddrives and thus the install, while well explained, was a tad more complicated than I was prepared for. It was here where I found my first glimmer of an error. For some reason the partition part of the installer would not open. After trying for a while to get the partitioner to open, I gave up and decided on xubuntu.
I downloaded the live cd of xubuntu, burnt to disk (old laptop wont boot off a usb, sad times) and same problem as before. It was a little better than ubuntu however and several times I got (without loading into the full live environment) right up to when it loads the partition program, loads it all up, and then freezes. I restarted the install about 5 times, then gave up, putting it down to the slow speed of the computer and determining to download the alternate installer.
The alternate installer was a lot better for this kind of computer, and as far as I've experienced it is highly recommended! Actually very easy to understand, and I love the keyboard test. Great idea. Anyways, back to the problem. I began to smell a serious rat when the installer got to exactly the same place as the live cd version, right after it loads the partitioner. Right after that I got a full light blue blank screen. Obviously it wasn't the speed of the computer that did it this time! I was shocked!
I tried another 5 times before getting up the courage to try the option which is repair installation or something. I tried to (i think) manually partition the drive or something, and you need to mount a file system. It tried to mount the harddrive and failed! This was the message it gave:
"An error occurred while mounting the device you entered for your root file system"
After this I tried again and after it failed i pressed control alt delete and it gave me an error about the drive being read only or something. "read only file system" ?
Okay I'm really suspicious at this point so I load up the bios and do a full hard drive test. It comes back 1- #7 fail, which a quick google search shows could be a number of things, from a dodgy drive to dodgy controllers. I even tried taking the harddrive out and putting it back again! So somethings dodgy hardware wise, but I'm not forking out NZ$140 for a PATA harddrive for my mates old crappy laptop.
----------------------------
So I guess my final two questions are
1 - Even if the harddrive is slightly dodgy why can't linux (not just ubuntu, puppy didn't work either) mount the drive when xp runs it completely fine and
2 - Is there any way, any boot parameter or anything that I could use to get around this problem without replacing the harddrive (which would hurt my pocket and might not work, plus I dont have access to a copy of xp)
Of course there may be a simple widely known explanation for all of this, but I been banging my head against this thing for a while now without any relief. And I was so excited when it first booted up. :(
And guys, thanks for any help, Ive got a feeling this isn't an issue that will be able to be resolved, but I've come to the end I can do so I'm chucking it out there and seeing what will happen. Sorry for the long post but meh. I figure more info is better than less.
Peace out
I have dabbled with a bit of linux on virtual machines and live cds before, and have finally gotten a hold of one of my buddies ageing laptop to... experiment on. Initially my mandate was purely to wipe the password on xp that he had forgotten, however this was quickly accomplished with the help of "Offline NT Password & Registry Editor". I quickly realised that the laptop was only marginally capable of xp and needed a good linux distro on it to get it flying. The plan was to set up a duel boot, get my mate to try both, and wait for him to revert to ubuntu when xp slows right down.
A good plan, with a fatal flaw.
The facts:
Compaq Presario V2000
224 ram
Average condition.
Capable CPU, however in XP the graphics card in devices came up with an error. Shouldnt be a problem methinks.
40 g ntfs harddrive with about 6g full. (model st94019a)
--------------
Ive just read through this and its a bit wordy so Ill quickly summarise the next few paragraphs
Tried installing with ubuntu, puppy linux and finally xubuntu, seems to freeze/stall just after loading the partition editor without actually entering. Determined that this is because the installer cannot mount the internal harddrive for whatever reason. Xp runs fine.
--------------
I began with trying vanilla ubuntu as I already had a cd lying around, however it took aaaaaages to get around. Obviously there wasn't enough ram to run the live cd so I quickly gave up on the idea when parts of the interface started shutting down.
Second go, an old version of puppy linux. Bad idea. This distro was clearly not designed to be installed on harddrives and thus the install, while well explained, was a tad more complicated than I was prepared for. It was here where I found my first glimmer of an error. For some reason the partition part of the installer would not open. After trying for a while to get the partitioner to open, I gave up and decided on xubuntu.
I downloaded the live cd of xubuntu, burnt to disk (old laptop wont boot off a usb, sad times) and same problem as before. It was a little better than ubuntu however and several times I got (without loading into the full live environment) right up to when it loads the partition program, loads it all up, and then freezes. I restarted the install about 5 times, then gave up, putting it down to the slow speed of the computer and determining to download the alternate installer.
The alternate installer was a lot better for this kind of computer, and as far as I've experienced it is highly recommended! Actually very easy to understand, and I love the keyboard test. Great idea. Anyways, back to the problem. I began to smell a serious rat when the installer got to exactly the same place as the live cd version, right after it loads the partitioner. Right after that I got a full light blue blank screen. Obviously it wasn't the speed of the computer that did it this time! I was shocked!
I tried another 5 times before getting up the courage to try the option which is repair installation or something. I tried to (i think) manually partition the drive or something, and you need to mount a file system. It tried to mount the harddrive and failed! This was the message it gave:
"An error occurred while mounting the device you entered for your root file system"
After this I tried again and after it failed i pressed control alt delete and it gave me an error about the drive being read only or something. "read only file system" ?
Okay I'm really suspicious at this point so I load up the bios and do a full hard drive test. It comes back 1- #7 fail, which a quick google search shows could be a number of things, from a dodgy drive to dodgy controllers. I even tried taking the harddrive out and putting it back again! So somethings dodgy hardware wise, but I'm not forking out NZ$140 for a PATA harddrive for my mates old crappy laptop.
----------------------------
So I guess my final two questions are
1 - Even if the harddrive is slightly dodgy why can't linux (not just ubuntu, puppy didn't work either) mount the drive when xp runs it completely fine and
2 - Is there any way, any boot parameter or anything that I could use to get around this problem without replacing the harddrive (which would hurt my pocket and might not work, plus I dont have access to a copy of xp)
Of course there may be a simple widely known explanation for all of this, but I been banging my head against this thing for a while now without any relief. And I was so excited when it first booted up. :(
And guys, thanks for any help, Ive got a feeling this isn't an issue that will be able to be resolved, but I've come to the end I can do so I'm chucking it out there and seeing what will happen. Sorry for the long post but meh. I figure more info is better than less.
Peace out