I have an old PC that runs Windows 2000 well. I would like to run Linux on it, and antiX was recommended as a good choice. I have used Linux for years as my main OS on my main machine.

All of several distros I've tried on the old box quit during the live boot process. At this link is a picture of the screen when antiX quits:
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://goo.gl/LToC4"
linktext was:"http://goo.gl/LToC4"
====================================


I hope you can suggest a solution or at least a direction for further investigation.

Codger

hello codger, welcome to the forum,
i once had that error too,
but that was when i tried to boot it from a persistent live-usb on a laptop with a messed-up bios...
that laptop can however boot live-cd's...
maybe it's the cd? have you burned it at the lowest possible speed? it can't find the filesystem, maybe cuz it's a bad burn?
are you using a cdrw instead of a cdr? i've once had that a mepis live-cdrw wouldn't boot unless i used the slow boot option. i think that was because cdrw's can only handle slower speeds, not sure though.
hope it points you to something...

the convert wrote:hello codger, welcome to the forum,
i once had that error too,
but that was when i tried to boot it from a persistent live-usb on a laptop with a messed-up bios...
that laptop can however boot live-cd's...
maybe it's the cd? have you burned it at the lowest possible speed? it can't find the filesystem, maybe cuz it's a bad burn?
are you using a cdrw instead of a cdr? i've once had that a mepis live-cdrw wouldn't boot unless i used the slow boot option. i think that was because cdrw's can only handle slower speeds, not sure though.
hope it points you to something...

Thanks for the response. I realized after I posted that I could have provided more information.

I checked the md5sum, and I burned it at 1X on the same drive that would read it. This same kind of problem has happened with several distros, all on cdr's. I even swapped in a different cd drive with the same results.

I would try the"slow boot" but I didn't see that as an option. I did try"failsafe" without effect.

Do you think there's anything in the BIOS settings that could be OK for Win2000, but not Linux?

Lane

add a root delay to the end of your grub boot line, that should fix the issue.

segment:
rootdelay=20

A suggestion: Is your processor a Athlon K6-2 ?
It it is the case, you should use the M11-486 CD

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

The rootdelay didn't do it.

It's an Athlon, but that's all I know. I'll try the 486 version. I have it on my main machine, will copy to USB and then to old box to be burned.

More later....

Lane

The 486 version got the same error, with and without rootdelay.

And this was with a different DVD drive in the old computer.

It seems like it must be something in the hardware or firmware, but I'm not enough of BIOS expert to know what should be there. It seems if it's OK for Win 2000 it ought to be OK for Linux.

Lane

I think i had that error on one of my old PCs (usually antix boots on everything).
I had a antix-8.5, used that one and it worked.
Might be worth a try:

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://distro.ibiblio.org/mepis/released/antix/"
linktext was:"http://distro.ibiblio.org/mepis/released/antix/"
====================================


What i often do is open the box and unplug what i can. Or try a different hard-disk. Like that, quite annoying (shutdown, fiddle, unplug, boot, shutdown... and so on). Removing and cleaning the RAM won't hurt too...

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I also have an old laptop with an Athlon in it, and in it other distros always stalled during the GUI part of the install, giving no information about the problem. So today I tried installing the minimal Debian Netinstall on it and was successful.

So I tried it on the old box we've been discussing, It went along fine, like all the others do, but then it stopped and gave a clear error that it could not read the CD.

So I found a THIRD CD drive, put that in, and was able to install successfully. The fact that the previous TWO drives behaved the same had me thinking it couldn't be the drive... but it was.

Lane

Did you get antiX to install or Debian?

anticapitalista wrote:Did you get antiX to install or Debian?

Debian. I also noticed that the hard drive is only 15 GB (!), so I'm going to put a larger drive in there before I install antiX.

Lane

Well I hope antiX will boot third time lucky __{{emoticon}}__

Yessssss! The third time... or at least the third optical drive was a charm. I now have antiX installed on the 160 GB drive I found in my junk box.

And I have a theory about the cause of my difficulties. The first two optical drives were DVD drives, and the third was a CD drive. I'm thinking the old BIOS couldn't handle the DVD drives.

But the problem is solved, and again I thank you all for your input.

Lane

I bet the DVD drives didn't play well with the older USB, which I bet is not usb2.0. Glad you got it working!