Booting & Settings Daemon

[lesleyp]

Geetings

I have had Mint 4 installed without problems, but am having problems loading and running with Mint 5. I have read the post "if you can't boot live CD" but don't feel comfortable with this level of expermental fiddling. I suspect a conflict between the Kernel and my hardware.
However I wonder if an error message received during one slightly more successful attempt may help to define my particular problem.

I insert the live CD disk, and get very rapid loading text starting with Loading Casper...." then "ready...." then "loading please wait.....". Mostly the system then immediately shuts down.
On the 6th attempt Mint 5 loads with the following error message
"There was an error starting GNOME Settings Daemon. Some things , such as themes, sounds, or backgrounds settings may not work correctly. The last error message was " Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote applicaton did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the net connection was broken. GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon nexet tiem you log in."
I continued and installed MINT which seemed to go OK, it auto rebooted OK the first time, and applications that I tried worked fine.
On my next manual boot from GRUB the system immediately again shuts down

I HAVE TRIED
I have verified the image integrity using checksum (winMd5Sum)
I have burned from .iso to 3 different disks using Nero image burner.
I have runn the disks from both installed optical drives
I also tried Ubuntu 8.04. as a comparison. Mostly loading would not commence, but once I got to 7% while loading kernel before stalling.

My setup is as follows:-
Dual Boot with WinXP
Processor: Pentium D Dual 940 core 3.2 Ghz
Mainboard: Intel DP965LT
RAM 2GB Corsair Value Select PC - 5300
Video: XpertVision (nVIDIA) GeForce 6600 PCI-E 512 MB
Optical Drives: Samsung DVD-ROM - DDU1615; LG DVD RAM - HL-DT-ST DVDRA< GSA-H1oN
Hard Drives: 2 X Western Digital 250 KS Series

[67GTA]

Try booting into recovery mode and see if you can see any errors to help us figure out what is crashing.

[lesleyp]

I have figured out the problem I think. Cooincidentally, I installed a Creative Sound Blaster X-fi audio card at the same time as installing Mint 5. I have discovered from the web that ALSA doesn't support X-fi cards at all. Stupidly I had assumed that as ALSA (asvanced linux sound architecture) would support a card from the major manufacturer that has been on the market for more than 2 years. ALSA had automatically supported audio on every other computer I've tried linux on, even my old Pentium 4 with an ancient Diamond Monster MX audio card. I know that Creative have an experimental Linux driver, but as I can't get any Linux distro I've tried to even install properly with this card installed, I don't see the point in trying it.

Actually,this is the last straw with Linux usage for me. I use two computers in different locations, and basically can't use most of my peripherals at all when running Linux, despite hundreds of hours searching forums and fiddling at the terminal.
And I had settled on Mint as my favourite distro.

Regards
Lesley

[rivenought]

Sadly, many times your hardware decides what operating system it wants to use no matter how much you may cuss and fuss. With the hardware you are using being Windows-centric, I guess that is the determining factor. While not the fault of Linux, the blame lies with the hardware manufacturers not sharing their driver code. Yes, I would be angry at them, too. Unfortunately, it looks like you will be stuck with a Windows OS for a little while longer.

Now, in light of future hardware additions, you have in your hands the decision power to purchase from manufacturers who support Linux. There are more and more every day. When a solid foundation is laid out first, then the rest of the system can be constructed with ease. Now that you have your feet wet and have researched a good bit, you can eventually assemble a really fantastic system.

Linux Mint will be waiting on you to come back. We hope you are not lost in the proprietary darkness of Windows for too awfully long. We look forward to seeing you back with us and running Linux Mint again soon!

[lesleyp]

Thanks Rivenought.
And I really thought I'd be able to shake free of Windows after years of bondage.
I have tried to make Linux friendly purchases. I bought a new printer to go with Linux, a Canon IP 4200, which was reported on the net to be supported by Linux. That was a misleading in the extreme, it works at about 10% capacity, no use for photos, no printer maintenance, no advanced settings. And I tried to get a suitable TV card with Linux drivers, the only one I could find did not fit my purposes.

However, I'll look Mint up again when XP looses support from MS.
Cheers