Hey all, so I found my brother's old laptop that currently has Windows ME installed on it. A bunch of the drivers are really messed up (I think that's why he got a new one all those years ago) and so Windows Me only boots in safe mode. Anyway, I tried running a LiveCD of Mandriva on it, but it doesn't work. Mandriva ran fine on the laptop I currently use, so I know it's not the CD. While booting, everything goes fine except one thing fails:

What happens is that it continues booting until it gets to a point where there's just a blinking underscore in the top left hand corner of the screen. After that the screen goes blank (but is still on). Any suggestions? Do you think it will work with another Linux/Open Source OS? If so, can you suggest any that would be good to go to from Windows?

Thanks in Advance.

Oh, and also, I don't know what kind of processor it has (some sort of intel) and it has 256 mb of RAM with about 15 GB of hard drive space.

Hi, It might be wise to start with a small Linux live distro and see how you go
http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads
Puppy is very versatile and may run on your old machine...otherwise try DSL
Good luck
Regards
paws

Actually, between my first post and now I got mandrakemove to work very well. Xubuntu also works too, but im having trouble installing it. I'm downloading the iso's for Mandrake 10.0 and I'm going to try installing it after that. The computer was so notgood up I couldn't really do anything on it in safe mode when I had Windows Me on it. It's possible that parts of the hard drive are bad because it said something about not being able to move a file or something. Is there any way I can fix this or at least attempt to although there's no OS on it right now? I'm gonna try and see if I can run some sort of checkdisk equivalent in mandrakemove maybe that will fix the problem.

So I put the Xubuntu bootdisk in and ran the utility on it to test the hard drive. It said everythign came up fine, yet still when I try to install it about 20% of the way through I get the following error message:


The computer does get hot while it's running, but I didn't think it got hot enough to do stuff like that. Also, I have a Pentium III processor.

I tried puppy, works great, but I'm having a similar problem I think. I was able to put the OS on the hard drive, however when I tried to boot without the CD it didn't work. I ran some tool called Grub something so that I could boot it without the CD but it just says that there is no operating system installed. Anyways, Mandrake finished downloading so I'm going to try that after I go out tonight. I'll update you when I get a chance.

Mandrake didn't work, it couldn't partition the drive. I think there's something wrong with the hard drive and I'll have to get a new one. Regardless, there's no more help I can get in this particular subforum. I'll figure it out, thanks and peace.

Looks like you need to do some more tests on the hard drive.....Try running the drive manufacturers utilities........ also if you have seatools handy they are worth a try.
If you have SpinRite this would probably be the first port of call.
Otherwise theres little to lose by "nuking the whole thing," partitions and all, and then just and starting again.
Regards
paws

I can't do it now because I'm at work, but the reason Mandrake didn't work is because the drive wouldn't partition or format correctly. It's a Hitachi. If the hard drive has a bunch of bad sectors on it (I was still able to log into Windows when it was still on the drive, just some certain files were corrupt) can I run their utility and do a low level format? I guess my question is really will bad sectors be repaired by something like that? Are there any tools I can run within Panda to diagnose or fix the problem? I have Panda running off a flashdrive currently.

The standard operating procedure in these circumstances is to run the disc tools from a bootable CD, you should be able to download the tools from the the manufacturers web site.........an alternative is the Seatools........... you will need to create a bootable CD from the files you download( often an iso)........so you will need to burn them as an image. ImgBurn is excellent for this:
http://www.imgburn.com/

As a further alternative you could run chkdsk /r from another machine to which you have connected the old drive or try Dban
http://www.dban.org/download

A low level format will not usually do the job.......if the drive is shot then there's nothing you can do ( outside of a lab) but if the drive is mechanically and electronically sound with the exception of some bad clusters then the above utilities are your best bet.
as to Panda if you have some disc maintenance tools for partitioning, formatting etc then by all means give it a try...
Regards
paws

Just ran Hitachi's utility and Seagate. Hitachi's utility scanned it for a minute or so and then said that it was bad and not a Hitachi drive. Seagate recognized that it was a Hitachi drive, scanned for 5 minutes or so, and then got to 99 errors. It failed the long test. I'm assuming that means that the hard drive is bad. What are my options? How much does a 10-20gb hard drive usually cost? Is it easy to put in myself or should I have a pro do it? It'd just be nice to have an extra computer I can run linux with. Preferably, I'd like to run Mandrake or Ubuntu or one of the bigger Linuxes just because.

Hi, Looks like your hard drive is shot.....it usually takes no more than a minute or two to do a hard drive change on a laptop...... ( I once did it whilst lecturing, when my laptop hard drive failed in the middle of my Powerpoint presentation....fortunately I had a spare drive with me, fully loaded......and the students didn't even notice............. I guess they were all asleep!

First download the user manual from the manufacturer's website this will give you directions on how to do the change for your particular make and model.
When you are all set, go into the BIOS and note down all the settings, then make sure the laptop is fully powered down, and the battery removed and the AC (Mains) disconnected, all disc drives .slots, ports etc should be empty. The drive will probably be an IDE type (check in the manual) and secured by a "trapdoor" in the base or side of the machine secured by one or two screws.They normally just slide out.

When you have installed the new drive and powered up check in the BIOS to see that it has been recognized OK
If you want a small drive then ebay is worth considering you should be prepared to pay around £12-15..........(say $18 USD) or so.

Your local friendly computer repair shop will probably have a stack of them laying about in a dark corner........perhaps in their "might come in handy one day" box..if you "cross their palm with silver" they may come up trumps for you. Many of these small drives get thrown into the town skip (dump?) often inside old laptops that folks have given up on.

It's quite satisfying getting an old machine working properly again and a linux distro (having a free licence) makes a lot of sense
Good luck
Regards
paws