New to Linux/Ubuntu 8.04 install


Recommended Posts

Trying to troubleshoot a PC that used to be Windows Vista Home Premium. Replaced a bad hard drive, but that might not be all thats bad.

Trying to reinstall Vista and Ubuntu get me the same distance. Through the bios. Ubuntu brings me to the CD install menu. All selections lead to same end. PC hangs on black screen with blinking white cursor.

Again this happens with Vista, only vista recovery cd didnt bring up any options. Loading files from cd, then boom. Black screen white cursor.

Any suggestions? If I can get this PC running, its a free lapop Gateway 3418

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hm... i dont always know what im talking about, but it sounds like maybe a heating issue to me.

processor getting to hot?

if not, try going thru everything one at a time.

take out a stick of ram, see if it goes. if not, try taking out the other stick.

unplug a hard drive, try the other hard drive.

pop in an old video card, see what happens.

double check your heat sink on your processor, reseat your processor.

those are usually the steps ill go thru to find a bad piece of hardware. sometimes works.

but if i had your problem i would start with looking for a heat problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Im not sure what the problem was 100%. But I was able to install XP Pro (moving to a Windows forum). Win 2kPro and Ubuntu and Vista Home Premium all hung at some point during the install process.

It has something to do with the HAL (hardware abstraction layer) because even XP Pro hung during install until I hit F7 during setup to allow Windows install to choose best HAL.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.