Problem installing latest Puppy in old computer

[Tekar]

I get this error when trying to boot the latest version from a live CD on an old machine. I've checked the iso for corruption, and re-downloaded several times. Slowed the write speed, and ran memtest on the old PC, but nothing seems to work. The error comes up right after loading initrd.gz

What to do?


Also, the PC's specs, if that matters:

Pentium II 430Mhz
64mb RAM
Onboard S3 video chipset
No OS on the HDD

[rcrsn51]

What do?

Get more memory. You should be looking at 256MB to run the latest Puppy 5.

Or try an older version of Puppy.

[Tekar]

Bumped ram up to 320mb, no effect U:

[rcrsn51]

Have you tried the CD on another machine? It may be that the optical drive on this old machine is failing.

[Tekar]

Alrighty. An older version of Puppy worked fine, but now I'm having issues installing to the HDD >>

I ran Gparted to format it to ext2. Then ran the universal installer, threw all the files onto the HDD and put on a boot partion with grub. when restarting, it asked me to save my settings, I did, then it asked if I wanted to copy some .sys files from the live CD into the save file. I said yes, and as it copied, a familiar message popped up. System halted.

Restarting without the live CD brought up a menu, asking me to either run linux or install grub. I ran grub then tried to boot into linux, the system restarted. Does it every time.

What do now? U:

[James C]

Then ran the universal installer, threw all the files onto the HDD and put on a boot partion with grub. when restarting, it asked me to save my settings, I did, then it asked if I wanted to copy some .sys files from the live CD into the save file. I said yes, and as it copied, a familiar message popped up. System halted.

When installing with the Universal Installer do not save anything when you reboot immediately after the installation.
Simply do the installation and reboot without saving....it should reboot into the fresh Puppy install.
Probably wouldn't hurt to have a warning to not save,cause this has been addressed a number of times.
HTH.

[jjmaster]

Then ran the universal installer, threw all the files onto the HDD and put on a boot partion with grub. when restarting, it asked me to save my settings, I did, then it asked if I wanted to copy some .sys files from the live CD into the save file. I said yes, and as it copied, a familiar message popped up. System halted.

When installing with the Universal Installer do not save anything when you reboot immediately after the installation.
Simply do the installation and reboot without saving....it should reboot into the fresh Puppy install.
Probably wouldn't hurt to have a warning to not save,cause this has been addressed a number of times.
HTH.

So I made this mistake and saved when I shouldn't have. Now what do I do to recover this installation? I even get the error when I try to boot off of the boot CD now. Ugh!

[rerwin]

I even get the error when I try to boot off of the boot CD now. Ugh!

You need to take control of the booting off of the CD. by entering "puppy pfix=ram" (w/o quotes) as soon as you see the "Lucid Puppy 5.2.8" screen. You have 5 seconds to press the first "p".

When you simply let the boot continue without entering anything, the installed pupsave (lupusave) file is used. So, after booting with pfix=ram, find the original lupusave in the directory you installed into and delete the lupusave.sfs file. Then remove the CD, reboot without saving and you should be "good to go."
Richard

[Flash]

An older version of Puppy worked fine...

For the benefit of anyone else who is trying to make Puppy work in an old computer, which version of Puppy and where did you get it? Thanks.

[jjmaster]

I even get the error when I try to boot off of the boot CD now. Ugh!

You need to take control of the booting off of the CD. by entering "puppy pfix=ram" (w/o quotes) as soon as you see the "Lucid Puppy 5.2.8" screen. You have 5 seconds to press the first "p".

When you simply let the boot continue without entering anything, the installed pupsave (lupusave) file is used. So, after booting with pfix=ram, find the original lupusave in the directory you installed into and delete the lupusave.sfs file. Then remove the CD, reboot without saving and you should be "good to go."
Richard

I was able to boot off of the CD now (Thanks rerwin), deleted my lupusave file, which was in the puppy528 directory on my NTFS partition. However when I try to boot off of the hard drive and choose my puppy install from Grub4dos, I get an error.

I went ahead and deleted the entire puppy528 directory and booted off of the CD again and did a new frugal install. I didn't try to update my grub4dos entry as I installed again to the puppy528 directory. Still getting an error message when choosing puppy528 from the grub4dos menu. It doesn't want to boot off of the hard drive for some reason. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Just to be clear, it's an old HP pentium3 laptop with 128mb memory with Windows XP installed. I didn't want to blow windows away so was trying to do a frugal install with grub4dos to have a dual boot off of the hard drive. It boots off of the CD fine and runs decent otherwise. The problem is this laptop is my friends who is only minimally computer savvy. He is traveling overseas and the whole boot off a CD is too complicated for him. He just needs it to boot up, web surf, send email and use Skype. It was too slow with windows and was hopping to give him a very simple way to use puppy. 5.28 is my favorite version.