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No boot after installing Education 12.4 Lite

MarkR

Wed Jun 26, 2019 9:34:18 pm

I'll admit to being very green with all Linux distributions, but I hope to find one that will function on my old Dell laptop. My first attempt was with Linux Mint, but it would not shut down or restart regardless of applying various solutions I found. I decided to give Zorin a try, but after successful installation and almost rebooting, it stops. After installation, I am prompted to restart. As it boots, it tells me to remove the installation medium (USB flash drive) and press Enter. It then arrives at the point that it asks for my code. Once entered, it states that it is successful. After what seems like a long wait, the screen displays boot details as shown in the attached photo and it stops. The mouse arrow is visible and will move, but no other action is possible. I have reinstalled the Zorin Education Lite 12.4 OS three times. They are clean installations reformatting the hard drive. Original OS was Windows Vista. I reformatted and reinstalled the OS on the flash drive using Linux Live USB Creator for the latest installation. I have used the installer without making any custom changes. I would appreciate any help and suggestions. The specs are below.

Dell Inspiron 1501 Laptop
BIOS 2.6.1
AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-55
2GB RAM

Swarfendor437

Wed Jun 26, 2019 10:08:21 pm

Hi, When you boot do you see GRUB at all? (Bootloader). If not press and hold left shift key during boot. Once there press E key to Edit the bootloader and add at the end of the boot script, space, then 'acpi=off' and 'nomodeset'.

Please keep us posted.

MarkR

Wed Jun 26, 2019 11:07:03 pm

Thank you. That got the system to boot completely, but I'm having trouble making the change permanent. I can get the 'acpi=off' to stick using command line "gksu gedit /etc/default/grub" and changing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi=off", but what do I do with 'nomodeset'? I've tried a couple approaches, but neither worked and leaving it out doesn't help.

Swarfendor437

Wed Jun 26, 2019 11:42:00 pm

MarkR

Thu Jun 27, 2019 11:23:25 pm

I was able to make the changes as shown. When I shut down the computer, I receive a 'reboot: System halted' message that is preceded by a series of numbers in brackets. The current is [ 1115.214594]. I have to use a hard shut down. When I start after this, it skips Grub and goes to a Zorin logo screen asking for the lock code, but it won't allow me to enter anything. Ctrl+Alt+Del reboots from there and then it starts into Grub. I select Zorin and it then boots to a different generic screen where allows me to enter the lock code. It boots fine from there, but then I'm back to the problem of not being able to shut down. This laptop is very temperamental with Linux distros.

Aravisian

Fri Jun 28, 2019 5:37:13 am

Is it possible another partition with boot information is interfering?

MarkR

Fri Jun 28, 2019 2:01:01 pm

There shouldn't be. It is not a dual boot and I performed a clean install and had it overwrite existing data. I did not customize any partitions. I'm not sure how it could have created such a situation if it exists.

Aravisian

Fri Jun 28, 2019 2:47:13 pm

MarkR wrote:There shouldn't be. It is not a dual boot and I performed a clean install and had it overwrite existing data. I did not customize any partitions. I'm not sure how it could have created such a situation if it exists.

It was worth asking about... The only reason I asked was: Dell.
Is your boot set to Legacy or UEFI and have you tried changing that to see what happens?

MarkR

Fri Jun 28, 2019 7:24:56 pm

Checked. Shows that Legacy compatibility is enabled.

Aravisian

Fri Jun 28, 2019 10:52:09 pm

MarkR wrote:Checked. Shows that Legacy compatibility is enabled.

I asked because I had somewhat similar problems on my Acer Aspire. I needed to change to the Legacy Setting from UEFI and that resolved my issue.

Alright... can you try instead of acpi= off, use this "acpi=noirq" instead?

MarkR

Sat Jun 29, 2019 4:21:21 pm

Thank you for your time and patience with me on this. Making this change allowed it to shut down the video and most services, but the power remained on and the fan was still running. It required another hard reset.

Is it possible that this distro is not right for this old Dell laptop or is this old Dell laptop simply not right for Linux period? I saw a number of reviews stating that Linux Lite OS has functioned well on this model, but that is anecdotal.

Aravisian

Sat Jun 29, 2019 5:06:30 pm

MarkR wrote:Is it possible that this distro is not right for this old Dell laptop or is this old Dell laptop simply not right for Linux period? I saw a number of reviews stating that Linux Lite OS has functioned well on this model, but that is anecdotal.

That... is a question I could not begin to answer. I just am too ignorant of all the factors involved.
Even On Topic: There may be a Simple Solution to your Problem that we have not yet found. That once found, everything will start working well with it.

What little I know involves:
Manufacturers always gear toward MS products. MS products dominate about 90% of the market. Because of this, occasionally, the hardware just does not mesh well with any Linux Distro. Sometimes some hardware does and sometimes that same hardware with that same distro on a different machine just doesn't.
And yes, some machines just don't like Linux no matter what you do. It happens. The best thing to do is to build a machine For Linux at the outset if you want a good Linux machine. But if you are trying to salvage an old machine- you are taking your chances. It probably will work. But won't always work.
Recently, I bought a small old Panasonic Toughbook that was built for Windows XP Tablet Edition.
I tested -many- Linux distros on it. Some gave major faults and problems, several had major errors on installation. Some worke quite well, but bogged down under a load.
The One Perfect Performer was AntiX. But AntiX was just too lightweight to handle what I needed to do (Toughbook is being used as an Automotive Diagnostic Machine).
Finally, I tried out using Zorin 12.4 Lite. (Not the Education one).
No installation issues, everything meshed perfectly, it accepted the SSD hard drive with no problems and carries what I require it to do very well. Unlike all the other distros I tried, the CPU usage does not flatline at 100%.

Why we have different experiences over-all, with two older machines, I couldn't try to understand at my current understanding. Perhaps a more experienced Linux user could help.
Sadly, ZorinAntwerp has left this forum.
Swarfendor is taking a much needed break- He has been voluntarily helping Zorin Users for Years and lately, doing it almost single handedly.
The Zorin Borthers team is reduced to just the Two Zorin Brothers, now. The over-all Zorin Group has been overworked and this is what happens... So we cannot even be sure if AZorin can chime in on the thread at this point without passing out on the keyboard. How he keeps his cool with his posts amazes.
The Simplest thing you can try is test a few distros on it. Try out Sparky Linux, for example. Or MX Linux. I do not know the difference between Zorin 12.4 Education and Zorin 12.4 Lite, but it may be well worth a shot to see if 12.4 Lite shines when Education didn't.
In the end MAYBE a Linux Guru could help get that running like a champ, if you can climb the mountain and find him -or MAYBE you might have to just let this one go. I don't know. What I do know is that it will still work out alright. You might find another older computer for Dirt Cheap like I did and save that one, instead. OR maybe as I said above, a simple solution awaits being found and you may have to set that machine aside a bit. I will keep looking...

Swarfendor437

Sun Jun 30, 2019 11:09:06 am

I've tried running Zorin Lite in the past which at that time was LXDE (now XFCE) and your biggest issue is that your CPU won't have support for PAE. There is a command to force PAE but my experience has been an OS running worse than a rhee-legged dog. I would advise you to give any of the following a try: Watt OS (http://planetwatt.com/new/index.php/downloads/), Quelitu - oops scrap that it's a dead project, AntiX 17.4
(https://sourceforge.net/projects/antix- ... ntiX-17.4/) their main site is down, hopefully not another distro that has bitten the dust - currently installed on a Dell Latitude D600 with 512 Mb RAM, SolydX Community Edition Stable (https://solydxk.com/downloads/community-editions) ;) :D