Nothing installs on my PC

[Kirsle]

So, I'm trying to get this old (couple of years) PC to work. Last summer when I moved it to a new house, it got there and wouldn't start up. When I'd push the power button, the hard drive and CD drive would come on, but the green power light wouldn't come on, and nothing would show up on the monitor.

I figured it was a bad power supply, so I got a new one. The computer comes on correctly now, but now I'm trying to install an operating system on it with no luck.

When I try to install Windows XP Home, the setup program gets to the "Setup is starting Windows..." phase, and then either gives a blue screen of death or just freezes up at that point. (This is during the first parts of setup from the boot disk, prior to formatting a partition to install to).

I tried to install Fedora Core 5 on it, but the setup program keeps exiting abnormally. It gives this error message right after I tell it to skip the disk check, right as it's beginning to run anaconda...

Running anaconda - the Fedora Core system installer
Install exited abnormally
Sending termination signals... done.
Sending kill signals... done.
Disabling swap...
Unmounting file systems...
[nine filesystem messages]
You may safely reboot your system.

9 times out of 10 it exits this way. Sometimes it will probe for hardware and find my onboard video card and monitor, and then "exit abnormally"... one time it got to where it was trying to show the graphical installer and then crashed.

When I try to install Ubuntu, I get a lot farther than the other operating system installers, but it never quite works. The Ubuntu installer program randomly fails in a different spot every time I try to run it. Usually the keyboard and language setup steps go by just fine, but when it gets to probing hardware to find the CD drive and loading the setup files, sometimes it glitches up here (the screen flashes black and gray and then returns to the setup screens, but when it does there's usually graphical errors, like no titles on the dialogs or a change of font, which usually is followed by an inevitable crash later in the install process).

Or sometimes one of the install steps will just "not work" and send me back to the menu, and when selecting the install item that it was supposed to have done next, the menu disappears and then comes back after a few seconds. For example, the "Detect network hardware" sometimes doesn't work and just shows the menu, and when I select "Detect network hardware" from the menu, the menu just disappears and then comes back.

It seems that if the install program glitches up during any phase, the install ultimately fails. Nonetheless, a couple times I managed to get it to go as far as to format a partition and install the core OS and required packages...

The "Select and Install Software" phase always glitches up and I've never gotten it to complete successfully.

Also, on all the trials that have gotten far enough to let me install a GRUB or LILO bootloader, none of them will install. It always gives me an error like "Can't install grub to /target". I've tried configuring it to install to the master volume, to /dev/hda1, to '(hd0)', to /dev/hda... nothing I try works, it always tells me it can't install it.

So, without a bootloader, I can't even boot into Ubuntu.

Lastly, I also have an Ubuntu LiveCD, which doesn't want to run any better than the OS install discs do. The LiveCD sometimes freezes during the loading process (where the progress bar bounces back and forth). Sometimes it gets past that point and then my monitor starts saying "Frequency out of range" (I assume Ubuntu chose a screen resolution too high. It does this sometimes by default, or I can set a specific resolution when I start Ubuntu).

Or sometimes it will seem to start up fine, but give me a login screen, which the LiveCD isn't supposed to do. The login screen says "Logging in as user ubuntu in 10 seconds..." but even when the countdown reaches zero and it tries to log in, it fails. I've tried logging in as "ubuntuno password)", "ubuntuassword", "rootassword", and a lot of other common default names and passwords, but nothing lets me log in. AFAIK, the LiveCD doesn't have a username and password?

Or sometimes it will give me an error message saying that the X Server failed to start and that the application isn't responding to any signals sent to it.

Or sometimes it will start up almost fine and try to show the desktop, and give an error message that the panels couldn't load. Or the panels will almost load (they'll be visible, but with nothing in them) and a "Bug Buddy" window will pop up, but not load anything; the OS freezes up.

Only one time when running from the LiveCD did Ubuntu almost start up fine. It didn't load the panels, but I added a launcher to the desktop to run xterm, and from that I ran Firefox. Firefox crashed after a little while and wouldn't run again; kept giving an error message from the terminal. I checked to make sure its last process wasn't still running; it wasn't; but Firefox wouldn't restart. I also couldn't manage to find Konqueror to run that (does Ubuntu even have Konqueror?)

And only one time when running from the LiveCD did it send me into a text-only mode, with a brief introduction about Ubuntu and a shell prompt. From this prompt I was able to mount /dev/hda1 (where I had previously almost installed Ubuntu to as I explained above, but couldn't boot into), but I couldn't run grub-install to try installing it, because I couldn't find out what the last argument to grub-install is for, and the manpage wasn't very helpful. I don't think I could get back to this text-only mode again if I tried though, so I don't know how much it would help to look up how to use grub-install.

Also, the rescue modes on both the Linux OSes that I've tried don't run any better than the installers do.

Now, as for the hardware in the computer:

There's a CD drive and a hard drive. I don't know what make or model they are, but I don't think they're the problem (otherwise the installers wouldn't get as far as they do). It has an onboard graphics card and ethernet card. It has 256MB DDR RAM. There are no other cards or anything installed (there was previously an NVIDIA card installed, but I took everything out after many failed attempts to install an OS, thinking some of the hardware might be the problem). So there's really just the minimum hardware possible.

I googled "Fedora install exited abnormally" to see what the cause to that might be, but none of the results explained that the install exited immediately after it tried to start the install program.

So... anybody have any ideas what's going on with this?

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Cuvou.com | The NEW Kirsle.net

 

[thedaver]

I think your conclusion that the CD ROM is not to blame is premature, but you may be right.

Frankly, you may have loose or flaky drive cables, a bad cd rom, spotty or loose RAM, overheating CPU (bad fan), broken hard drive, etc. etc.

I recommend NOT chasing OS after OS. Get ONE to work by inspecting your hardware components, swapping in alternative hardware where available, and otherwise using a process of elimination to assure yourself that nothing further than the power supply was damaged.

Millions of installations are in place for the distributions you named, I would place little probability that the entire spectrum of OS' you named are the culprits.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[Kirsle]

When I had first discovered it wasn't starting up, I migrated to a different computer and took its hard drives and CD drive with it. My grandparents wanted to get it working again, so they bought a new 80GB hard drive and CD drive for it. It's possible that they might be defective. I'm thinking the problem might be in the RAM or processor. I'll keep messing with it and see if I can figure out what might be the problem.

On another note, sometimes the BIOS doesn't start up. When I first got the computer to turn on "correctly", all I had was a blinking cursor in the corner of a black screen, unless a bootable CD was in, in which case it would boot from the CD. I installed a second hard drive, which was just an old 4GB one I had lying around, and after doing this I got a BIOS screen when I turned on the computer, when I could press F1 and get into the BIOS. So that might be something else to investigate too.

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Cuvou.com | The NEW Kirsle.net

 

[thedaver]

OK, the really core way to solve this is to disconnect EVERY drive (CD, hard, floppy, tape) and boot the machine. Also remove USB, printers, and anything else you can disconnect.

What you should see is the successful BIOS load EVERY time. If it counts up RAM (old fashioned, but potentially an option you can set) then you should see the right amount of RAM every time.

THEN, leave the machine sit for a minute or two and convince yourself that the CPU is being cooled and that the machine doesn't otherwise go flaky.

NEXT, cable up the CD ROM *only*. You SHOULD be able to run a LiveCD distribution *without* an HDD attached to the system.

Frankly, my *guess* is that your motherboard is suspect. These tests may help you determine that or not.


D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[stevexff]

thedaver's advice is sound. Eliminate everything, then add components one at a time until it breaks.

Given that your original problems came after it was moved, I'd take the opportunity to take it to bits and re-seat all the cards, memory, etc. and clean the inside with a vacuum cleaner to get rid of all the fluff. I once bought a new PC from a reputable manufacturer, which wouldn't boot straight out of the box. Removing and re-seating the cards fixed the problem immediately.

Steve

[small]"Every program can be reduced by one instruction, and every program has at least one bug. Therefore, any program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." (Object:erlDesignPatterns)[/small]