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trying to get a old desktop running

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by pc-guru 1 view

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ok i have a old compaq with a 600mhz celeron
128 mb ram, 128 geforce card and a 160g harddrive in. my xp pro cd i think is scratched
because the driver.cab file won't load so i was liked screw it....i tried to load linux slackware which i installed fine but when i reboot after installing the kernel i get a black screen and the same when i tried to load puppy linux as well...i even tried another alternitive called reactos which is a OS still being developed.... www.reactos.org and that just boots to a black screen as well and i fdisked the drive each time i installed a new os i even tried another 10g hardrive i had and same crap...any ideas what it may be?

4 replies

by thumbsup2

Try booting with a live CD. I know Ubuntu has one. Many of the other distros do too. If anything can get the video drivers working, that can. If that fails, I would suspect the video card itself.

by mwhipple

Which is giving you the black screen...the initial boot into the OS or when X is trying to start? If it's the console then ensure that any framebuffer graphics settings are properly configured. If it's X then make sure you're not automatically booting into X during troubleshooting (check the inittab) and make sure you have the right video driver installed (nvidia usually has decent drivers), that the AGP driver is configured properly, and everything is alright in the configuration (such as refresh rate). You'd probably be best served by booting one of the default drivers initially.

by oh smeg

Remove the RAM and use a soft rubber along the gold contacts to clean them do the same to the Video Card and any other plug in cards that you have fitted.

The place a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD in the Drive and test the Hardware. Quite often Cab Errors when installing Windows are relater to RAM problems so start off with that but test all of the hardware.

You can get a copy of the Ultimate Boot Cd free from here

http://tinyurl.com/3jnpy

Alos instead of using FDisk you should wipe the drive when changing OS Platforms as Windows uses 1 Partition by Default and Linux uses 3. Destroying everything on the drive by writing zeros to every sector is a good thing to do to prevent any possible problems cropping up. You can get Boot & Nuke from here free.

http://tinyurl.com/4rfur

As this is a Compaq also check the Power Supply for correct function. Compaq used a very marginal PS so they failed quite often by going Low on the Current and stopping the unit from working. If you are at all suspicious of the PS use a Known Good one to test with.

Col

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