I think it’s the AMD chip as a likely suspect, as I got to the end of the boot process and got a floating “not support” box when I tried an earlier version. I have an AMD Athlon 3200+ 2200 mhz 512k cache, another 512k in the expansion slot (and the system control panel says 32-bit, though they made the Athlon in 64 too. Do any earlier versions support this 2004 AMD relic?
What operating system do you have working on the computer you are trying to install on? I need to get all the hardware information.
Post-edit: We are in the 20’s for posts in this thread and I still don’t have your hardware information. In your 1st post there is this:
with no information. I was not kidding when I posted this:
So let’s get this done before we go any further OK? You can post screen-shots or .txt files with the up arrow.
I’d like to get this solved. I can’t get into anything besides the bios because windows will no longer load. The hard disc is a Western Digital WDC1600bb-22gua0, but I haven’t been able to get any specs and the onboard video card is whatever HP put with this machine. Should I try to find the model number of the computer and look up the onboard graphics card to see if it shows up on CNET or ask HP? I don’t have any documentation on this old gifted machine. I’ll see if I can’t pull up specs on CNET, but the ones posted for my ASUS laptop on CNET didn’t even have the right RAM specs, and customer service at Fry’s Electronics uses that to tell you what parts you need!
A model # would be a start. And model #'s are usually easy to find. A laptop or notebook > look on the bottom. A desktop or tower look on the back or bottom. If you don’t find it by all means ask HP. Post-edit: With the model number you should be able to find hw info on the internet in minutes.
If you do internet search with the model # you most likely will find a HP webpage with all the information we are looking for and more.
Try to imagine the difficulty of trying to analyze a problem when we can’t see what is happening or what you are doing and worse we don’t know what we are working on. It we get some HW info at least we will know what we are working on. And possibly can make a determination of whether this will or won’t work.
Also know that there are Linux distros specifically for older hardware. See here and here. Just so you know there are alternatives.
Thanks, I got the model and serial number and signed up for HP so I could get into support, and I can’t find it under “no longer supported” even. HP Pavilion HP a000 is the model and even if it was under unsupported, there would be no specs. Can you suggest an alternative similar to Mandriva that will work on an old machine? I think I’m done wasting everyone’s time. I hope this was a learning exercise. Here’s what I got from the case:
HW BOM: On8121100 SW BOM: NASI SYSTEM NUMBER: PP163AA-ABA
SN MXK4490FJS It’s Windows XP circa 2004. Memory is 1 G because I put in an expansion of 512k and it came with 512k.
Oh don’t be calling it Mandriva. This is OpenMandriva not Mandriva. That is great big legal no no.
No, I don’t have enough experience with any other Linux distro to recommend or not recommend one. The reason I provided those links is because those are people that do exactly that and so they should know what they are talking about.
Do you have any newer computer? If you do consider booting ‘Live’ versions of Linux on that 1st to learn how to do that and to see what your chosen Linux distro looks like and works like. You don’t have to install Linux to learn a lot.
Also if you have a newer computer try installing Linux in a Virtual Machine like VirtualBox on your Windows operating system. This will get you used to the installation and partitioning processes as well as hardware requirements and a lot of stuff.
I say Mandriva because I’ve tried installing Mandriva Free and Mandriva One, so I should probably just get another Windows machine for a couple of hundred bucks and use that, seeing as OpenMandriva failed to load properly and would not even hang up at the same spots each time, as one might expect more than not. I was looking for a solution that is similar to OpenMandriva, but in keeping with the hardware limitations of this old machine. Raspberry Pi is somewhat limited, so I was looking for something in the middle. I have VirtualBox as it works with my BOINC projects like SETI. That sounds like a plan. I didn’t want to experiment on my essential computer.