Re: Installatio problem

[<da_alchemist yahoo com>]

Ok, from your description, it seems as if the boot
process is failing after the BIOS determines which
media (hard drive, floppy, CD-ROM, etc.) it will boot
from.  If this is the case, it could be that your boot
sector (or MBR) is damaged since it is not able to
load the boot loader (GRUB or LILO) into memory.  If
it is loading your boot loader and you are presented
with a command prompt allowing you to setup your boot
environment (boot device, root device, memory
settings, etc.) and then you hit <enter> to proceed
with the boot process, the problem could be with the
kernel image, incorrect kernel parameters, bad ram
disk (initrd, which could also mean incompatible
hardware), etc.  In order to diagnose that you will
need to read the documentation on each boot loader to
help diagnose your problem (info grub or
/usr/share/doc/<whatever lilo version>/README (notice
the "LILO start message" section)).  Additionally,
LILO has a verbosity level that can be passed as a
parameter (boot:  linux verbose=[1-5] (5 max
verbosity)) to see what's occurring during the boot
process and GRUB similarly has a debug option that can
be toggled on/off.  I hope this helps.

Thanks.

--- James Marciniak <jam libcom com> wrote:
> I didn't ask for anyone to diagnose the hardware, I
> asked what does the installation check at that
> point.
>  
>  Both installations lock the machine up at the same
> point, so I was assuming it is checking somethings
> in specific order.
>  If I knew what the item was then I could diagnose
> the problem myself.
>  BTW- it installed 7.0 with no problems
> 

> I have an old clone machine that I would like to
install linux on, 
but
> I have attempted both 7.3 and 7.1 and both times the
installation
> causes the machine to lock up just after it checks
my HD partitions
> and then detects my floppy drive.
> > What is it checking next that could be causing my
machine to crash
> with both distributions.


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