SliTaz Forum
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Hello, new member here!
I've been reading a lot about light linux distros, and for what I read and tested (on virtualbox), I've choosed to go with SliTaz. I have an old laptop with only 128RAM, and it works really poorly with windows, so I'm trying a linux aproach.
Now the problem:
The LiveCD worked fine (only a problem with screen resolution but more of that later), and then I used the SliTaz installer and installed it on dev/hda1 (where I had windows installed).
Installation worked fine (I guessed), but when I reboot and try the LiveCD again it won't work and simply shutsdown, after a few seconds.
If I won't run the LiveCD, it will go to Windows normally (which I thought it was already gone!)
Now, I can't even access the LiveCD of SliTaz :\
I'm kind of new to linux, and definitely new to SliTaz so help would be really appreciated!
Thank you.
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Update just to make it clear: I CAN access the boot menu of LiveCD, but when I press ENTER he does a number of procedures and then shutsdown.
Hope that I'm making myself clear.
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It appears you installed slitaz to a nonexistent hard drive and therefore your real hard drive was unchanged. Just a guess tho. Do you remember if you formatted the drive windows was on when you installed slitaz? if not maybe it was unable to install on a drive already formatted to NTFS or FAT32 and full of windows files. I am not sure as I am using slitaz on a USB drive for now and have never went thru the installation process yet.
Anyway have you tried booting another computer using your liveCd, maybe it got somehow damaged or something. If possible try to see if it works using another machine. If that is not possible or easy to do have you tried burning another iso image on another Cd and using that?
The problem is not from the cd, I've tested it on another PC and worked fine.
I did not format the drive witch contained windows (at least I think SliTaz didn't do that), but what you say makes sense.
So the solution is maybe delete windows partition, and try to install it then?
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Yes you are going to need to format your windows partition which i am presuming is your whole hard drive to a linux file system as well as partition it the way you wish it. I usually do this before i install a linux distro but the slitaz installer has options to allow you to do it during the installation process. As I said above I have not installed slitaz but i have installed other linux distros before. I usually create a separate partition for home as well as a swap partition twice the size of the amount of RAM my machine has. Be sure when installing slitaz that you choose your actual hard drive. If in slitaz you open a terminal and type su and then enter your root password and then type the command 'fdisk -l' without the quotes it will list all your drives, partitions and whatnot and you should be able to tell what device is your windows hard drive or partition. In my case on a netbook it list /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb1. from looking at this information I can tell /dev/sda2 is where windows is installed on this machine and that dev/sdb1 is my usb drive. ( For the record /dev/sda1 is a windows recovery partition). Anyway your results will differ, look at it closely and you should be able to tell what device represents your windows hard drive or partition. Remember this for when you install slitaz.
As to the CD problem I would still try to burn another ISO onto a new cd and try that to see if you can boot into slitaz. I have used many liveCds over the years on multiple machines and have noticed that Cd drives can vary in sensitivity to minor damages to the Cd. Some Cds will work in one machine but not another due to perhaps a small scratch or even a fingerprint on the CD. And by the way have you tried cleaning the CD or looking at it closely under bright light to see if it has any scratches or smudges on it? Sometimes that is all it takes. If cleaning the Cd and burning a new Slitaz Cd does not work, can your machine boot from a usb drive? If so and you have one you can use try making a bootable slitaz usb drive and booting from that. If not can your machine boot another distros liveCd? Have you tried that?
If None of that works can you tell us the error messages or information on the screen when you try to boot from a slitaz CD? I know it scrolls by fast but the last bit of information it shows should reveal at least where in the boot process it failed. Honestly tho it is a bit weird, if it booted before from the same CD it should still boot from it... at least i would think so.
Good luck and hope you figure it out, slitaz is a nice distro and perfect for a low power laptop like yours. I can even imagine how poorly windows even win xp or win 2000 runs with only 128M 
128MB of RAM...well
I thing it might worth reading this: http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:lowramcd
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Thank you very much for the help!! It's really been quite enlightening to me.
I did what you told me and since SliTaz didn't work I downloaded another distro (Puppy Linux). I've been told it can support 128MB, so I went for it.
Created the partition and swap as you explained, and was able to install the OS without problems.
Unfortunately the shutdown problem remains, and my system does not recognize any OS installed. Anyway, you were very helpful and I thank you for that.
I have no doubt that SliTaz is a nice distro and really quite good for a low power laptop like mine, and yes Windows Xp works so badly you can't even open firefox without waiting at least 2 minutes.
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Hmm i have no experience with puppy tho I have heard it is a good light weight OS. I take it you managed to install Puppy but now your machine will not boot up from the hard drive? But you can still boot from the puppy live cd? If that is so can you boot from the livecd and see if your hard drive now has puppy installed and windows gone?
If Puppy is indeed on your hard drive and your machine will not boot from the hard drive I would think that something is wrong with Grub or whatever puppy uses as a master boot loader. I think it is grub anyway so either grub was not installed correctly or maybe not installed at all or it is not configured right. PuppyLinux has a forum so I would ask there if you decide to keep Puppy and try to fix this problem. Or of course you could be stubborn like I usually am and try googling the issue and figuring it out yourself. A good place to start would be to google "grub" or perhaps "Puppy linux grub" and read about it. Wikipedia has of course has a good article on Grub, a good place to start to learn about it.
But if you decide to try to get slitaz to work perhaps take totoetsasoeur's advice above and try to slitaz flavor designed for less memory. Good luck 
I couldn't start Puppy after installing it from hard drive or LiveCD.
So I tried SliTaz again, and it worked from LiveCD (irony?). I've removed the Puppy partion with Gparted, created a swap partition and installed SliTaz sucessfully!
Now the computer detects the hard drive OS, but it still shutsdown after listing some commands :\
Again, many thanks for your patient and sharing skills
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The hard drive detects Slitaz now? Do you mean you can boot up to a menu of some kind, hopefully grub And if you try to load slitaz from that menu it crashes and the computer shuts down? If possible post the error messages or whatever stuff is displayed on the screen right before it crashes. And have faith it looks like you are getting somewhere
Yes, it detects now.
Yes, I can boot up to a menu of some kind (dunno if it's grub).
And yes, if I try to load slitaz from that menu its crashes after some commands showing up fast, and the computer shuts down.
I don't know if I can really see whats going on with the commands before it crashes, because it's really fast.
Thank you.
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Hello again,
The last line (right before shutdown) says something like "isapnp: Scanning PnP cards..."
Don't know if it's correct or if it makes any sense at all.
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Well it certainly sounds like Grub is working and slitaz is trying to boot. Read How to edit grub boot parameters carefully, take notes if necessary because that is what I am going to try.
First try to boot into Slitaz and at the Grub menu where you select Slitaz follow grumbymoles advice in that article and add the boot option isapnp=off to the kernel line and see if Slitaz will now boot up. If it still hangs try booting again and adding both :
acpi=off isapnp=off
If that does not work try rebooting and only this time go into the system Bios setup and see if it is possible to deactivated ACPI support, save your changes and exit. Your Machine should reboot, see if that works. Computers differ on how to enter the Bios setup but it generally involves hit a function key, on my netbook F2. During the very first screen it shows booting up it should tell you.
@ylee: Thank you very much for all your help.
I think the problem might be from the computer, because now sometimes it runs and sometimes it shutsdown.
I'm not giving up on SliTaz because I think it is the best small distro available, and I'm currently on it Regarding my old laptop, I guess I'll just run it with the LiveCD if it can run with the hard drive.
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EDIT: I also can't find ACPI support on BIOS. Looked for it everywhere 
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