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ready2trylinux
5th October 2005, 03:00 PM
Hello,

I am trying to load FC3 on an old machine that I have, but I am having difficulty getting it to install. First, the screen is garbled in graphic mode. I don't think it likes my LCD screen, (or the onboard video card). I tried a couple of options (lowres and nofb) that I had read about in books and on forums, but it didn't help. I switched to text mode and eliminated that problem for now. I figured I could work on the LCD incompatibility after the OS is loaded, so I am not too worried about that for now.

Here is the setup I have:

*HP Pavilion
*AMD-K2 333 Mhz
*256 MB ram
*Hard drive has been upgraded to 40GB Western Digital WD400bb-00AUA1, partitioned 50/50 with M$ Win98 on one half, and free space on the other. I am trying to set up a dual boot system.
*Upgraded to CD-RW (unknown brand).
*Rockwell RipTide combo card Modem/Sound Card
*Onboard Video (unknown chipset)
*D-Link Network Card
*AOC LCD 17" monitor

The main problem I am having is some kind of issue with hard drive recognition. I get to the screen where I choose "English" and click next, it gives me two errors. The first is:

Assertion (heads < 256) at disk_dos.c:486 in function probe_partition_for_geom () failed.

It gives me the option to Ignore or Cancel. I chose to ignore. It then brings up a second error, which is:

Assertion ((C * heads + H)* Sectors + S ==A) at disk_dos.c:495 in function probe_partition_for_geom () failed.

It, again, gives the option to Ignore or Cancel. I chose ignore again. It cycled through these two errors four times, then allowed me to the next screen. I chose "custom" install and the same errors popped up again, several times. It then allowed me to go to the Partition screen. I chose Automatic Partition, (keep partitions and use free space) and it gave me the same two errors several more times, then it gave me the following error:

Could not allocate requested partitions

Unsatisfied partition request
New part Request--mountpoint:None uniqueID:3
Type: physical volume (vxm) format:1
badblocks:None
device:None drive:['hda']
size:0 grow:1 maxsize:none
start:none end:none migrate:none origfstype:none.

I tried re-starting the install and adding the option ide=nodma because I read somewhere this option might help, but it didn't.

I decided to try to manually partition with Disk Druid. When I brought that screen up, it showed the M$ Windows partition and the free space, but the free space appeared to have the same amount of space as the total hard drive. Disk Druid shows 20 MB on vfat, and 40 MB of free space. That confused me, so shut down and decided to see if anyone could give me any suggestions.

I apologize for the lengthy message, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible. I am new to Linux, so I am not real familiar with the partitioning requirements and figuring out the error messages, but I am reading and learning more every day. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?

I look forward to input from you guys. Thanks for your assistance.