OK, be nice....

Hello everyone from Miami, FL. I am very new to all this (Message Board, Topic, Posting, heck I don't even have a Face Book account) I have recently purchased my first PC, after owning 18 Apple/Mac products. To say that I was disappointed with Windows 7 Ultimate is to put it mildly. Upon me speaking with the salesman who sold me the Lenovo All-In-One 24" IdeaCentre B-500 and discussing my dis-satisfaction with the OS, he suggested Linux. It never occurred to me that the movement had grown since I first heard about it many years ago. Great job to all those Open Source guys and gals out there! After researching variations of the core Linux foundation, I have decided to go with Zorin. I have successfully downloaded and burned a boot-able ISO DVD. But something is wrong. My screen goes gray and has a blinking cursor for hours after the DVD stops spooling. Even when I try the booting without splash and boot info it then locks up. The last line of code is:

[ 1.239128] mtrr: type mismatch for d0000000,10000000 old: write-back new:wr

you can hear the disk spooling and even an audio singnal that sounds like it should be booting fine, but the screen never changes from that line. I have read reports it may be due to Nvidia Graphics card that is installed in my desktop.

Can anyone help a open minded, frustrated (been at this for 10 hours now), middle aged Miami'an out before I throw this thing of the 33rd floor balcony.... Please?

I´m not sure if I'll be able to help you, but I assume you are having problems with the live session actually booting and bringing you to a workable desktop, and if that is true you may have failed to make a bootable disc. There are very possible reasons for that to happen, but let's not dwell on the details. At any rate, you can do something called an md5 checksum (there may be a tutorial on that here, not sure though) to make sure your downloaded your ISO succesfully. If that checks out, I would suggest that you try using the Linux Live USB creator http://www.linuxliveusb.com/en/home to make a bootable usb instead of a DVD, and try that way. This last approach would tackle the possibility of the problem being caused by a poorly burned DVD, which can happen for things such as trying to burn it at the fastest setting. You can also try to burn your disc again at a lower speed and (if supported) simulating the burn process first: you can never be too careful really.

should you choose to try the usb route, there is ONE step that you may have to go through: getting into the BIOS and enabling boot from an external device. there is guidance in plenty of places on how to do this, but if you're stuck just ask here and I'll guide you through the whole thing.

Now, if you have been able to run Zorin and your PC suddenly goes gray, then I can't really help you with the info you are providing, but I can tell you that it's most likely an odd incompatibility with a component of your computer. You can test for that by substituting parts until you strike gold, like connecting your PC to another monitor (most modern TVs should be a solid substitute for a monitor for this purpose)

Hopefully I managed to help you in some way. As a sidenote, what didn't you like about win 7 Ultimate? I am just curious.

Cheers

Hi,

firstly when you made (burnt) the ISO, did you burn it at the slowest possible speed??. Did you check that the disk had burnt correctly??. Does your PC have any history with hardware problems. Have you done any formatting on the drive??. Did you boot in safe vesa mode??.

You must give us a few more details but one of the most important; is the first part of my post!!.

Regards Wolfman

I have had similar issues in the past ... usually due to a bad image ... re-download, and re-burn.... retry... if it still isn't working I would try to boot from USB