Dual Booting With vista - HP g6000 laptop

[strider666]

Apologies for jumping straight in with a question, I'm a complete novice and would've even felt out of place introducing myself!

I've got a HP G6000 notebook, AMD x2 1.7, 2 gig ram, vista home premium. Trying to install PC Linux OS

I got as far as burning the image on to the disk, and was delighted by how in even ran in live mode. I installed it on the pen drive no problems, but when I tried to boot up, it just sticks in the first loading screen (And I waited about half an hour just to make sure).

I'm so desperate to have a full working linux on my computer so I can really get into it, and hopefully once and for all not have to rely on *$&%ows..

Any help would be so appreciated..

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Does it throw any error message? Have you tried pressing Esc key? Try to install it in Text Mode.
Boot up from PCLinuxOS, open Terminal/Konsole and execute this :

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

[strider666]

Thanks very much for the reply.

Basically when I boot up, it takes me to the grub 1.5 loading screen and it gives me 5 options.

Linux
Linux - nonfb
Linux safe settings
Windows
Windows 1

When I choose Linux, it takes me straight to the loading screen and then doesn't go any further. The progress bar simply doesn't move and it is totally unresponsive.

When I try the next 2 options - Linux - nonfb, and Linux safe settings - they both take me to the same page and in turn both come completely unresponsive. I've tried pressing every button..

This is the last few lines that I get trying to boot from Linux nonfb and Linux safe settings. Hope this can shed a bit of light on it..

VFS: Can't find ext3 filesystem on dev sdb1
Mount: error 22 mounting ext3
Switching to new root
ERROR opening /dev/comsole!!!!: 2
Unmounting old /proc
Unmounting old /sys
Switchroot: mount failed: 22
Initrd finished
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempting to kill init!

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

[jayd512]

Are you able to boot up using a Live CD? If so, post output of

sudo fdisk -l

[strider666]

I didn't see the 3rd post. Apologies.

It said that sudo fdisk -1 was an invalid option - So I put in sudo fdisk -l also. Here's the output you need to see (hopefully)..

[root@localhost root]# sudo fdisk -1
fdisk: invalid option -- 1

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK Change partition table
fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK List partition table(s)
fdisk -s PARTITION Give partition size(s) in blocks
fdisk -v Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
[root@localhost root]# sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 18703 150231816 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 18704 19457 6056505 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 8178 MB, 8178892800 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 994 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 543 4361616 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb2 544 994 3622657+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 544 652 875511 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb6 653 994 2747083+ 83 Linux

[yancek]

Go into a terminal again using the Live CD as root and navigate to the menu.lst file and post the output:

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

We need to see this as it is the menu Grub uses, need to check your entries.

[strider666]

I'm sorry for the delay in replying.

After many problems I ended up wiping the whole hard drive and managed to install PC Linux Os. I have it up and running now - Although I've got resolution problems.

Thanks very much for all of the replies, it's really appreciated..

[devils casper]

Although I've got resolution problems.

Start a new thread and post the output of this

su -
lspci | grep -i vga
grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[strider666]

I ended up downloading other distros to see if that made any difference. I've installed red hat fedora with no problems what so ever, and it seems to support my graphics card..

It's not quite as sharp as I would like but the internet runs nice and smooth now.

Thanks for the reply - I appreciate it so much as I really haven't got a clue what I'm doing at the minute..