PCLinuxOS 2010 fails to install on Acer TravelMate 430

[colinetsegers]

Hello. The title already tells the problem: PCLinuxOS 2010 fails to install on Acer TravelMate 430.
Till now systems 2007, 2008 and 2009 installed and worked without any real problem, but 2010
starts to boot, displays the bull image with the mention the system is booting and, apart from some
occasional text like "Detecting hardware" and "Thinking" the image of the bull appears again, but
no further reaction; the bull hangs forever at that stage. I tried different versions of OS 2010: 2010,
2010.1, LXDE, OpenBox; of no avail on the Acer TravelMate 430 with it's 1 giga ram!?.
On the other hand it's worth mentioning the LXDE 2010 version works very well on my old
Pentium III HP Vectra...

Does anyone knows what to do for my Acer Laptop? Thanks on forehand,
Paul

[scoundrel]

did you try the different boot options ??

[menotu]

You could do an md5sum and/or media check to make sure the download and burn don't have any issues.

[johnmart]

Try Scoundrel's suggestion; vesa

[colinetsegers]

Hello folks. Thanks for the suggestions, but before launching the question I already checked on the first
obvious possible failure reasons as bad cd-rom copy and different boot options. On the other hand if the
issue is due to a hardware problem, which hardware element could that be?
Paul

[Artwi]

Is TravelMate 430 a single core CPU system?
Try:
F6 > Kernel Option > Safe Setting
then type 'nosmp" as a boot option.

I suppose 2010.1 has a problem with single core CPU.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,73424.0.html

It was the only way I could run it on system with Celeron (945GM chipset, 1GB RAM).

[colinetsegers]

Sêcifications for this Acer TravelMate 430:
- 15.0" XGA TFT LCD
- Intel Pentium 4 - 3.06GHz

I guess this is a fast but single core CPU machine. May indeed be the reason
for the install failure. This TravelMate 430 features also a special command
device on the frontside, commands similar to those of a cd-dvd player.
Never using this set I opened yesterday the laptop and just  disconnected
those external cd-dvd commands. Maybe this will offer a change? I still
have to check that. At least it will take a bit less power from the battery.

Paul

[colinetsegers]

Hello everyone,

First of all thanks to all of those who tried to help. I just discovered the origin of the problem:
it was indeed a hardware issue, but not the CPU. It's the disconnection of the external
cd-dvd commands set that debugged the PCLinuxOS 2010.1 live-cd. It's worth mentioning
because some other people over there may have a similar problem.
I wrote this message while booted on the live-cd!

Best wishes to all of you,
Paul

[colinetsegers]

Hello everyone,

To be honest, at last, the hint of typing 'nosmp' as boot option DID indeed improve
the boot process, which means there were 2 reasons for the regular boot failures:
 
1) The useless external cd-dvd command set (which I disconnected to obtain at
least one successful boot out of two ...)
2) Single core CPU ('nosmp'), which seemed to solve entirely the problem.

Now, to be completely honest, I did install at last system 2010.1, and sorry people,
but lots of problems:
- reducing an application results in a quitting
- horribly very big clock figures at the right of the panel
- strange behavior of applications 
- changing of background desktop image without asking for it
- lettertypes generally too big (my guess is the system was designed for the more
recent wide screen displays and the whole lot of small laptops)
- no access to the main hard disk files and informations as to capacity and used space
- all kinds of discomfortable behavior; by the way I largely prefer the behavior and
display of system 2009 !

Probably the 2010 system will ultimately evolve into something excellent, but for
the time being I reinstalled system 2009.

Many thanks to all those who tried to help,
Paul

Is TravelMate 430 a single core CPU system?
Try:
F6 > Kernel Option > Safe Setting
then type 'nosmp" as a boot option.

I suppose 2010.1 has a problem with single core CPU.

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,73424.0.html

It was the only way I could run it on system with Celeron (945GM chipset, 1GB RAM).