(SOLVED) unable to install zorin on an old ibm t42 laptop

i have an old ibm t42 laptop which has a pentium m 1.7ghz processor with a 40gig hd and 512megs of ram which i thought would be a good enough machine on which to install zorin and do some practice on. (the laptop that i installed zorin on the other day is fine and working well, just not anything like up to its full caperbilities .. yet.) back on the t42, i booted using the the gparted dvd and all was well. then i booted with the zorin 9 32bit disk and got the following on-screen message:

"ERROR: PAE on this Pentium M. (PAE can potentially be enabled with kernal parameter 'forcepae' - this is unsupported , may cause unknown problems and will taint the kernal.) This kernal requires the following features on the CPU: pae.
Unable to boot - please use a kernal appropriate for your CPU."

have just turned the machine on again to check that i got the above detail correct and the following appeared on-screen:

"GNU GRUB version 0.97 (636K lower/104691K upper memory)
[Minimal BASH- line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ]
grub>
grub> " (the cursor is stationary & blinking at this point)

i then shut down and again booted with the zorin 9 disk and got the same "ERROR" message above.
finally, tried to run my boot-repair disk but got the same message.
so the only disk that worked was gparted
both these error messages mean nothing to me. perhaps the problem has arisen because the t42 is too old ... i don't know. haven't used it for ages.

can anyone help please or should i just ditch the t42 machine?

Hi,

I would go for Zorin Lite rather than Zorin OS Core as it is an older PC:

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

See also (Zorin Lite is based on Lubuntu!):

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu-fake-PAE

hi ...
yes, the t42 was released for sale around 2003/2004 so not exactly a young bit of kit.
i'll go with your suggestions ... many thanks ..... michael.

Hi Michael,

keep us posted and take a look at the post install guide for Lite:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4835

many thanks wolfman ...
i downloaded lite and began to installed but got no further than the error:pae message that i'd had before.
then i looked at the lubuntu-fake-pae site then the detailed descripton...forcepae link and in effect, the job was done ... i hace lite on my ancient t42!
one...slight...problem however ................
when the time came to type in my login password at the start of the installation (which took forever!), i am convinced that i typed in what i wanted it to be.
after all was done including booting into recovery mode as you suggested, i eventually got the distro up on screen, typed in my password and was rejected. repeated it 5 times but still got rejected.
i suppose there's an easy but painful answer to this which is to start the whole process over again from start to finish but i'm hoping there's an easier way such as getting into the guts of the installation, checking the password and resetting it if neccessary.
what d'you think?
what i had plannned to do now was to go into the post install guide link and follow that through ... but now, i can't because of this stupid password.

Hi,

try this:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LostPassword

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/resetpassword

thanks for that ...
both looked pretty easy but i opted for the second one.
did fine till i was asked to type in my root password but i had only got as far as the end of the installation.
then when i'd booted, the login window came up but wouldn't accept what i was sure was my new login password.
i need to be logged in before i can set up my root password but if i'm locked out at the first boot .........!!
bit of a problem.

Hi Michael,

are you trying to log in as "Guest"?, when you reach the login screen, press the arrow keys and make sure your regular username shows on the screen and then log in to that account!.

actually, i've just made another attempt with a word that i knew wouldn't be accepted ... hit 'enter' and a red bar with white text came up saying it was incorrect.

when i first attempted to login after the installation, i typed what i thought was correct, hit 'enter' but no red bar appeared telling me it was wrong.
what happened was that the login window disappeared, the blue coloured screen remained for perhaps 5 or 6 seconds till it was replaced by a black screen ... then the blue screen, together with the login window returned to the screen.

because of this, i don't think i mis-typed my pwd ... i think there's another cause ...
just thought you should know.

nope ... my login name showed up correctly

Did you follow this advice?:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4771

hi wolfman ...

as soon as i read the linked article, i knew the answer to the problem or at least i was 99% sure.
then i held the dvd up to the light and there it was ... only 1 tiny hole but i guess that was enough.

once i'd burned another dvd using imgburn (usually use nero), i did a re-run of gparted and zorin lite on my t42 and it was successful.

burning at a slow speed ... very sensible ... should have remembered but completely forgot.

thank you for getting me back on track.

just as a final note ... the laptop on which i installed zorin 9 is generally used by my wife who ended up not really liking linux as much as microsoft so on friday, i reversed the complete operation back to w7. she's much happier. my ultimate goal is to dual-boot z9 & w7 on my desktop and then just use z9 but until that happens, at least i have my t42 on which to practice with zorin lite. your post-install guide will be a great help.

cheers till next time.
michael.

Hi Michael,

good, will mark as solved!.