Installing Zorin on a T42 - pae problem

Computer: IBM Thinkpad T42

So I'm looking to try out Zorin, I downloaded the iso for Zorin 7, made a bootable USB, everything went fine making the USB stick, I popped it in, rebooted my laptop, selected the "Live Environment" option, and get the following error

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This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: pae

Unable to boot -- please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.
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Reading around it seems my T42 does support pae, but doesn't say so correctly, and the installer chokes on that. Now, according to http://jj89128notes.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... me-in.html, it is possible for Zorin to run with a non pae kernal, the only issue is you need another computer that does install Zorin correctly first, to make your own iso, and I don't have another computer sitting around.

So do I have any options at this point? Here's my guesses/asks.

- I could install Lubuntu since it does not require pae, but the UI of Zorin is what I am interested in checking out. Is there any way to install Lubuntu and then install the Zorin UI stuff over top of that?

- I found some pages about how to replace a kernal in an linux iso, but it was all done in Linux. Is there a way in Windows to take the downloaded Zorin 7 ISO, download a non PAE kernal somewhere, and "slipstream" it into the iso so it install's? If I look in the USB stick I made in windows I can see the kernal files (they are casper/initrd.gz and casper/vmlinuz, right?) but I doubt I could just download older versions of those files from somewhere and replace the ones on the USB stick, right? If I could, where would I get the new kernel files?

- Is is possible to edit the installation script to not check for pae?

- Can we ask some "higher power" to whip an an iso of Zorin 7 with the generic linux kernal that doesn't use pae and post it somewhere for download?

It is worth mentioning that I am a complete and utter Linux noob, and anything I do would have to be achievable on a Windows machine, since that's all I have access to at the moment. Based on what I saw in screenshots and reviews I would love to try Zorin out, but so far my fora into the world of Linux is DOA

Hi,

you could install Zorin 7 Lite (based on Lubuntu) and build on that, it is only 32 bit and should work for you!.

http://zorin-os.com/free7.html

Regards Wolfman

Zorin 7 lite was what I was trying when I got the error.

I tried Zorin 6 Lite, and that worked. Is there any way to transplant the Zorin 6 kernel into the Zorin 7 iso?

tried something, I took my Zorin 6 USB stick, copied casper/initrd.gz and casper/vmlinuz to my my Zorin 7 USB stick, and surprisingly, it actually booted to the Live CD. Unfortunately nothing worked (not even the touchpad) so other than staring at a pretty desktop it didn't get me much, but it was still an interesting result.

I used an ISO editor to swap those files in the ISO and am now recreating the Zorin 7 USB stick with those new files in the ISO, we'll see what happens

Well, swapping kernels isn't the best ideas, I can usually boot the machine, but what works and doesn't work is a c*** shoot

This page http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~webtom/+ju ... ad:/README give the steps to comment out that PAE check in the kernel build script, is there any way to get that script for Zorin so those lines could be comments out and the kernel built without the check?