Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver - Mandriva
This is a discussion on Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver - Mandriva ; I have an old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop that a friend dropped off to
see if I could repair. I think it may have a major hardware problem,
but I can't seem to put my finger on it.
It's an ...
-
Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver
I have an old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop that a friend dropped off to
see if I could repair. I think it may have a major hardware problem,
but I can't seem to put my finger on it.
It's an 800MHz Celeron-based machine with 128 MB RAM. It seems to be
built around an VIA 82c586/686 chipset. It originally had a Windows XP
installation on an NTFS partition that would not boot.
I started swapping the expansion RAM chip out of it and discovered that
it would boot once when I swapped the RAM out, then fail to boot again
until I put the RAM back in. Seems to implicate a problem with BIOS? I
checked out the BIOS and it looks okay, but frankly it's barebones.
I've toyed with the idea of updating that BIOS but Compaq's website is
not entirely clear about what I need to do that. I am holding off on
that option and will risk bricking the machine with a bad BIOS flash
only if it becomes truly necessary.
At any rate, I initially suspected that it might be the hard drive, so I
whipped SpinRite on it. SpinRite found no problem with the drive, but
it did blow away the NTFS partition. No biggey -- it wasn't really
working anyway.
At this point, for whatever reason, it seems to be attempting to boot
reliably and so I started trying to load a Linux distro on it. I had a
new CD for Ubuntu Fiesty laying around and tried it first. It tried to
load as far as starting the X server and hung with a blinking cursor. I
assume there just isn't enough machine here to use it.
Next up I found a PCLinux OS live CD. I tried that and it tried to load
up the live OS off the CD. After 30 minutes I had fans whipped up to
top speed and a blank taskbar at the bottom of the machine. I got sick
of watching it and pulled the plug.
Finally I dropped my Mandriva 2007.1 DVD in the drive and fired it up.
Things were going pretty well until somewhere in the "License" stage of
the install, Mandriva produced a list of ide drivers and asked me which
one to use.
I have no idea, so I selected "ide-generic". It didn't work.
At this stage, I can assume that there may be a problem with the
motherboard (IDE bus?) or BIOS hardware. But it also may be possible to
feed this thing a driver that will work.
Any know anything about this stuff? Can you help me out?
Thanks.
--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042
CONSIDER: ===========---------,,,,,,,,,............. . . . . .
damn, the autonomous mouse movement starts usually after I use a
mouse button
don't use a mouse button then 
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
-
Re: Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver
Mark Adams wrote:
> I have an old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop that a friend dropped off
> It's an 800MHz Celeron-based machine with 128 MB RAM.
> Finally I dropped my Mandriva 2007.1 DVD in the drive and fired it up.
> Things were going pretty well until...
The system requirements for 2007.1 says 256MB RAM, minimum.
I was able to install it on my Gateway Pentium 4, 1.6 GHz, 128 MB RAM,
but it took some tinkering, and I could not get it to work properly.
I finally reverted to 2006.1, which continues to work fine with 128 MB.
Cheers!
jim b.
--
UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.
-
Re: Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver
Jim Beard wrote:
> Mark Adams wrote:
>> I have an old Compaq Presario 1200 laptop that a friend dropped
>> off It's an 800MHz Celeron-based machine with 128 MB RAM.
>
>> Finally I dropped my Mandriva 2007.1 DVD in the drive and fired it up.
>> Things were going pretty well until...
>
> The system requirements for 2007.1 says 256MB RAM, minimum.
>
> I was able to install it on my Gateway Pentium 4, 1.6 GHz, 128 MB RAM,
> but it took some tinkering, and I could not get it to work properly.
> I finally reverted to 2006.1, which continues to work fine with 128 MB.
>
Ugh. I missed that one.
At any rate, I think I've got discs running back to 8.2. I should be
able to get SOMETHING to install.
Thanks Jim. Good catch.
--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042
CONSIDER: ===========---------,,,,,,,,,............. . . . . .
Occam's eraser:
The philosophical principle that even the simplest
solution is bound to have something wrong with it.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
-
Re: Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver
On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:23:24 -0600, Mark Adams wrote:
> At any rate, I think I've got discs running back to 8.2. I should be
> able to get SOMETHING to install.
>
> Thanks Jim. Good catch.
Have you tried running memtest86 on the laptop, with all the memory
installed? Bad memory can produce the symptoms you are experiencing, so
I'd do that before anything else.
--
imotgm
"Lost? Lost? I've never been lost... Been a tad confused for a
month or two, but never lost."
-
Re: Compaq Presario 1200US asking for ide driver
imotgm wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:23:24 -0600, Mark Adams wrote:
>
>
>> At any rate, I think I've got discs running back to 8.2. I should be
>> able to get SOMETHING to install.
>>
>> Thanks Jim. Good catch.
>
> Have you tried running memtest86 on the laptop, with all the memory
> installed? Bad memory can produce the symptoms you are experiencing, so
> I'd do that before anything else.
>
Actually, I did. I made 15 passes with Memtest86 and it detected no
problems.
--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042
CONSIDER: ===========---------,,,,,,,,,............. . . . . .
Life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would
wantonly inflict on someone else.
-- Clarence Darrow
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
