I installed Ubuntu by using the text installer because it wouldn't boot the livecd. When booting the livecd the progress bar on the splash screen would get all the way near the end and then it would stop. So I then just decided to install it. After the installation I went to boot it up and it did the exact same thing as the livecd. I reboot my pc adn when it showed the splash screen I press Alt+F1 to see what was wrong. It showed that it was freezing up on loading the Hardware abstraction layer hald, and of course i have no idea what that is.
Sounds like you need to use some boot options.. acpi=off is the most likely.. add it to the first line of the boot/grub/menu.lst file look for a line like this title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18-6-486 and edit it to look like this title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.18-6-486 acpi=off
Thanks varnull I was wondering if everybody died during my abscense. LOL Debian Etch is the only OS on my machine now but I'm still a neb and Ubuntu would probably be easier.
Ok I searched google and someone said to add acpi=off at the end of the kernel line in grub. However since I can't even get into Ubuntu, I can't do that and I can't seem to mount the partition in Debian because of permission.
Odd if you are root.. I normally boot puppy live and then use the mount tools as it's easier to just browse and edit files that way than fight with the command line sometimes.
I just decided to use Debian since it works. I will probably grab some other distros later to see how they work. Thanks anyway.
You can do a temporary edit to the grub menu by hitting "e" once the menu comes up. If it works for you, once it boots up you just have to make the edit to menu.lst as root to make it permanent. Or you can boot a live CD, mount the partition and make the edit from there. Not being able to actually boot directly from a partition isn't the end of the world in linux, always options.
Yeah before I gave up on Ubuntu I found out that acpi=off didn't work anyway. Just the VIA motherboard I guess. I hear that a lot of people using EPIA's have all sorts of problems. Oh and by the way after varnull mentioned Puppy Linux I looked it up and now I use it to watch flash vids and DVDs.
