LiveCD 4.0 - To boot or not to boot

[Akerbos]

Hi all!

I run old MEPIS 6.5 on little Hades - that's not very satisfying, though stable. On Hermes, however, Daryna serves me well (great distro). So I'd like to install it on Hades as well.

Trying to boot from CD, I encounter several problems. The only configuration I can boot with is 1280x1024 (native screen resolution), noacpi and _not_ save graphics mode. Otherwise, X would not start properly and freeze.
Logged in, fonts are distorted and desktop doesn't fit to screen - no matter, I will configure that after installation. So I try FF and www, works. I start Amarok to test sound, works. Wait, eh ... freeze and forced reboot? (this will happen any time I start Amarok or GParted, didn't look much for other killers.)

I cannot come up with any reason for brand new Mint failing where ancient MEPIS succeeds, so please help me here. What information do you need?

MB: Asus M2N 1394 nF430
CPU: AMD Athlon64 2200 3500+
GC: Asus EN7300GT

[Husse]

Now you've got me confused - please explain which role greek mythology plays in this

[Akerbos]

What did you name your PCs?

[Husse]

Well the kingdom of death would not be my favorite name
I suppose you are using the same CD?
To be really on the safe side check the md5sum of the ISO. Strange as it may sound it could work on some computer even with wrong md5. The error may be minor and tolerated here but not there...
I cant see anything out of the ordinary with your specs
I have a 6600GT and I have to use "Safe graphics mode" when I install - it can't use the nv driver
Talking of drivers there's a new version of Envy which uses a new nvidia driver that corrects some problems
http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

[Akerbos]

To install another driver, I had to install Mint first, hadn't I?

It's the same CD I used to install Mint on three other PCs. The image is gone but I could download it anew, I suppose.

I had some problems back then installing MEPIS. Well, not with MEPIS, but no other distribution I tried worked properly with my hardware (mostly sound and network did not work). I found out that NForce2 chipset sometimes causes trouble.

Well, I still have no clue. Perhaps I should try a naked ubuntu...

[Husse]

My bad - probably wrote too many posts yesterday
I thought you had the problems on the installed version.
Yes, nforce2 could be a problem, nvidia no longer supports it....
Try the irqpoll option added like you added noacpi

[Akerbos]

I take you meant noacpi _and_ irqpoll?
Using both, however, I came to see the gray bar that should have become a taskbar on black background before it restarted

[Akerbos]

I just tried a hint on the mainpage and substituated "quiet splash" with "nosplash noacpi noapic". Gnome started, but then my speakes emitted something that sounded like ls -R / > /dev/dsp (if not as long) After that, the obligatory reboot occurred.

[Husse]

I take you meant noacpi _and_ irqpoll?

Actually I meant both options, first irqpoll on its own...
This was a stubborn bugger....

[Akerbos]

Gutsy and Fedora 8 fail the same way (well, ubuntu was to be expected to)

I still have to try irqpoll alone.

I wonder if it may have something to do with the kernel. An older version of ubuntu worked...

[Husse]

In a sense everything with hardware has to do with the kernel.
Unfortunately while a new kernel brings new features and perhaps better stability it sometimes removes support for some hardware
The list of options in the troubleshooter is not complete but the most used options are there
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... d_problems

[Akerbos]

Since I had not that much time to spare since my last post, I tried not many combinations.

All with my monitor's native resolution and standard boot mode:

noacpi nolapic => reboots while booting
noacpi break=top => boot ends in black screen
acpi=off nolapic => X-Server dies on login
noapic nolpic noacpi break=button => boot successful, freeze (after using Amarok/GParted)

Can you think of any combinations I should definitly try out?

I came to read two posts ( [1], [2] ) today; one of the guys does have a similar MB and processor, and both do have an 64Bit CPU. Since there is no 64Bit version of Daryna, may that cause the problems? I don't think it should, but who knows?

Do you have any ideas how I could manage to get Daryna with an older kernel installed and running?