Mint LiveCD Hangs after a few minutes...

[truevox]

I've been trying to install Mint for the last few days here. It's the first *buntu flavored distro that seems to work outta the box on my Dell Inspiron e1405 (Intel Graphics, Intel Wifi). Great, right? Well, it seems to stall after a few minutes (the CD spins down and then just never spins back up, causing everything to freeze except my cursor). This occurs wheather I'm installing or just using it to surf the web (or copying over data from my Windows partition, as trying to install Mint seems to have screwed that up, my fault for not backing it up, but it's still a shame). Now I'm up the creek with no usable OS (Windows is throwing a problem with C:\Windows\System32\hal.dll, Mint is freezing), and I'm just wondering if anyone else out there is having these problems, or if I'm unique.

Yes, I have tried starting it in safe video mode, but it doesn't seem to make a differance (performance wise or visually). It spits out an error when GRUB fails to install, but due to freezing up shortly thereafter, I can't copy and paste it for all to see.

At any rate, GREAT distro, I'm *REALLY* looking forward to using it (esp. once Mint comes with a default KDE again). Just trying to get things ironed out so I have SOMETHING to use.

[techne]

I recommend grabbing a copy of the Parted Magic LiveCD and/or SystemRescue LiveCD to help you straighten out your system and then re-install Linux Mint. It sounds as if you experienced an unclean install, which might have resulted from a bad burn of the Linux Mint ISO.

However you do it: you need to find a way to make a new burn of the Linux Mint ISO and probably download and burn an ISO of one of the LiveCDs that I mentioned above to repair your system. That is my best guess and would be my strategy for handling the situation if I was stuck in this kind of predicament.

[truevox]

I did try to reburn it. Twice. If I can get wintendo up and running, I'll redownload it too, or at least check the MD5. Would it affect it that I'm using a (granted, new) CD-RW? I don't have any CD-Rs, so I hope not.

[truevox]

Ok, Wintendo (and sweet, sweet World of Warcraft) is up and running again. I checked the MD5 of the ISO (f57c1935b04546ced05f4e8b3d6fdea8) against the one that you guys list it as, and that checks out. So I'm gonna try burning it ONE MORE TIME (:D) (there should be no need to re-download it as the MD5's match up, right?), and then I'll restart and try it one more time.

I *REALLY REALLY REALLY* can't wait to get Mint up and running. I am *SO SICK* of living in Bill's world . I tasted Linux for a little while on an old gateway lappie I have, and it was sweet. But the hardware support wasn't there (that's why I got a Dell). But the Dell isn't much better. Next time, I'm gonna spring for the good stuff (either a MacBook, or something from System76).

[truevox]

Yeah, it's the weirdest thing: After 5 or 10 minutes where EVERYTHING works GREAT, it just freezes up. I haven't dared to try to do another install, and I've reburned the cd 5 or 6 times by now. Is it possible that the use of a CD-RW is effecting the outcome in a less then favorable manner? And if that's the case, would running it off the CD in VMWare Player demonstrate this too?

Thanks for all the help, it's a REALLY nice looking distro!

[scorp123]

Very important to know: Did you test this with other Live CD's too? Do they also freeze your system?

Either you have defective RAM or a overheating CPU.

I think you may have a heat problem. My Compaq Evo N610c used to behave the same. The problem was that the Linux distros back then (2002 / 2003) when this laptop was sold did not yet fully support the ACPI BIOS that this stupid machine had. The consequence was that the internal CPU ventilator never activated and the machine overheated, causing the CPU to shutdown. Result: instant freeze or a very very surprising instant poweroff while I was sitting in front of the laptop ...

Can we try this? When you boot your Linux, hit F6 "Other Options" and then add these arguments to the kernel command line (before you boot your machine!):

Code: Select all

acpi=off apm=on no-hlt

Then boot into Linux and have some applications open, e.g. a screensaver? Just to give the CPU some workload. And then check if it's still freezing ...

[truevox]

I haven't had a chance to try your test suggestions yet (though I will soon) but as for other LiveCD's, I have used both Sabayon Linux and Knoppix with success. All others that I've tried could never boot into X (presumably due to the 945resolution thingie needed for Intel cards).

But Sabayon worked and indeed installed, and Knoppix worked fine for the short time I used it (not more then 10 or 20 minutes).

Thank you for your prompt reply. I will post when I get more information!

[truevox]

Ok, right now I have it running in VMWare, and it hasn't (yet) frozen up. I'm thinking you might be on to something. It's humming along like a top! The install just finished, restarted no problem. Stupid computer....

Well, at least I know it's not Mint's fault! I'll try the ACPI suggestions below next to get it running natively.

[truevox]

Crud. It 'twas a nice idea, Scorp123, but sadly, even after amending the acpi=off apm=on nohlt to the end of the F6 selection, it still leaves me as frozen as can be. Do'h. I didn't even have to run a SS. It froze up just with standard setting up of the Wifi and trying to surf (though I've done other things then Wifi and had it freeze too, so I don't think that's the issue). Any other thoughts?

Thanks for the continuing support!

[scorp123]

Crud. It 'twas a nice idea, Scorp123, but sadly, even after amending the acpi=off apm=on nohlt to the end of the F6 selection, it still leaves me as frozen as can be ... Any other thoughts?

Hmmm ... did you run a memory test already? Might be defective RAM?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=05ee9f5227a51aac1e61b309a88e30df&t=340220
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=05ee9f5227a51aac1e61b309a88e30df&t=339918

Seems there are other Dell users too with problems:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=05ee9f5227a51aac1e61b309a88e30df&t=339237

Another idea could be to disable IO-APIC interrupt handling and see if that works ...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=05ee9f5227a51aac1e61b309a88e30df&t=337663&highlight=noapic

Let's try this ... Press F6 on the boot screen and add these arguments:

Code: Select all

acpi=off apm=on no-hlt noapic

And remove the quiet and splash options ... let's see what the kernel spits out when it boots!

[brbubba]

I had the exact same problem with my live CD. Tried booting in regular and safe graphics mode. Then went to F6 and removed "quiet" and it seemed to boot fine. Once I installed it to my hard drive the same thing happened. Once again I removed the "quiet" option and it booted fine.

[nixed242]

I had the exact same problem with my live CD. Tried booting in regular and safe graphics mode. Then went to F6 and removed "quiet" and it seemed to boot fine. Once I installed it to my hard drive the same thing happened. Once again I removed the "quiet" option and it booted fine.

Did you try disabling ACPI from your systems bios? I had the same exact problem. I couldn't figure it out at first. ACPI=off and noacpi were useless. It appears they don't override the Bios option on some computers. Live CD and my Linux Mint install haven't crashed since I disabled it.

I don't know which bios you have, but my ACPI option was under the power management section.