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#1 2011-10-18 19:36:12

Chrys349
Member
From: Romania
Registered: 2011-09-04
Posts: 50

[solved] arch doesn't start properly on my pc

I have an old pc (2003) and a newer one (2008). On my new pc, Arch, Knoppix and Debian Testing work fine, but on the older pc, they do not work properly, meaning they are not able to start or initialize properly after boot, and always end up with  frozen display errors.

On the older pc, the only way I could start the arch installation from the core iso image, was by hitting tab and appending "vga=1" from the main menu of the iso image. After installation was complete, the OS fails to start properly and doesn't arrive at the login, but after 1, 2, 3 or somethimes 4 resets, the OS starts whithout any error and arrives at the login. So, after I push the power on button, I have to reset that PC several times before I can use it. Before I reset it, I wait about one minute to see if it continues or remains frozen, and when it remains frozen, the last line from the output is not the same every time it frozes.

For example, sometimes it says:

Waiting for UDev uevents to be processed [BUSY]

... and I wait one minute, then I press the reset button, it boots again, and this may be the last line displayed:

[5.686693] CR2: 00000000194377c7

... or:

[6.426989][drm] Initialized radeon 2.10.0......

... or:

[6.184416][<c0455d5f>] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/x028

.... or:

6.184416] ---[ end trace e993384140471596]---

... or:

...... note: udev [221] exited with preempt
[5.863339] ---[ end trace 61a7ad99ad9239be]---

... or other times, instead of SLiM, there is a black screen...

This is what happened when I installed Debian Testing, I had to reset that pc several times before the OS could arrive at the GDM login, and when Knoppix fails to initialize, it says "could not mount disk".

Other distros that I've tried but were loading succesfully every time were Debian Stable, Ubuntu 10.04 and Linux Mint 11.

I cannot understand why knoppix, debian testing and arch are all failing to load properly so many times on my older pc, since they load flawlessly on my newer pc. I swiched from Windows to Linux 3 months ago, I have no idea what workaround to try... all I wanted was to make the pc run faster by replacing windows with gnu/linux, a lightweight distro like arch, a lightweight desktop manager like xfce or wm like openbox, lightweight apps, etc, but it worked only with the newer pc...

The hardware components of the older pc are:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 @ 2400 Mhz
Motherboard: Intel D865PERL (with onboard audio disabled from bios)
Video card: ATi Radeon 9200 SE
Sound card: CREATiVE SoundBlaster Audigy SE
LAN: ASUS NX 1001 fast etherned pci card

Last edited by Chrys349 (2011-11-26 17:05:52)

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#2 2011-10-19 13:34:47

shulamy
Member
From: israel
Registered: 2010-09-11
Posts: 453

Re: [solved] arch doesn't start properly on my pc

i woul'd check the memery sticks first.

many strange error masages is due to memory problems.

ezik

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#3 2011-10-19 20:11:57

Chrys349
Member
From: Romania
Registered: 2011-09-04
Posts: 50

Re: [solved] arch doesn't start properly on my pc

but if there's something wrong with the memory sticks, why is Debian Stable and Ubuntu 10.04 working perfectly fine, and Knoppix, Debian Testing and Arch are not ... ?

nobody here tried to install Arch on a pc and discovered that even the installation doesn't start ?

Last edited by Chrys349 (2011-10-19 20:20:17)

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#4 2011-11-26 17:05:34

Chrys349
Member
From: Romania
Registered: 2011-09-04
Posts: 50

Re: [solved] arch doesn't start properly on my pc

solved... I got rid of kernel freeze, or kernel hang, by appending the "acpi=off" parameter in grub and syslinux

I have no idea what "acpi=off" does, but it's the olny solution I found that enables me to both install arch and use it...

Last edited by Chrys349 (2011-11-26 17:06:39)

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