[Novalug] Hardware : Compaq Presario 1700 -- goofed up?

[Nicholas Brenckle]

The machine is most likely fine. The bootloader didnt go in, so the old W2K
bootloader is there. Only when it goes to load, there isnt a W2K to load and
it dies (chkdsk or whatever) Had the same thing happen today with a laptop
loading Ubuntu over XP. I still got the XP spash screen and then it would
crap out about "not booting properly" and give the "normal" option, but then
reboot on me anyway :-)

I started a load again (CentOS, and did the text option this time, carefully
selected my packages) and all went fine. Not sure what happened the first
time.

If it happens again, try using the FC6 cd and do a 'rescue', see if it
finds/mounts the hd. Then you can try installing the boot loader by hand and
get real error messages to debug.



On 4/10/07, Beartooth <karhunhammas at lserv.com> wrote:
>
>
>         I have a friend to whom I've long bragged that linux runs
> better on old small slow machines that Windows. Now I have his
> old laptop on my desk, trying to put linux on it for him,
> replacing W2K.
>
>         When I eventually got it to boot from media, the first
> FC6 install disk told me way early that I didn't have much
> memory, and it would have to start swapping right away; I told it
> OK to that. When it got to Grub, I told it to go ahead and put
> that in the MBR. First mistake right there, maybe.
>
>         Shortly after that, I got some sort of error messages
> which I didn't understand, except that it ended by saying it was
> aborting the install.
>
>         Trying again, it tries to boot to W2K; but halfway
> through that, I get a long error message about "inaccessible boot
> device." That tells me to run CHKDSK /F (after doing hardware
> things that're Greek to me), but doesn't seem to have a prompt.
>
>         It doesn't even try to start booting FC6, Ubuntu, nor
> Knoppix afaict.
>
>         Is this machine toast, or can it be salvaged?
>
>
> --
> Beartooth Bookworm, Reading Intensely
> I'm not either absent-minded! I'm single-minded.
> There's a difference.
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