On Thursday 18 May 2006 17:30, StephenW wrote:
Asus A7N8X-Deluxe
Hi Stephen, Have you checked the Asus website to confirm you're running the latest BIOS for that board? http://usa.asus.com/index.aspx Note: use the 'download' link at the very top of the page, then search for "A7N8X" in the product number field and select "manual" in the 'category' drop-down list. It looks like those boards were first released around early 2003. There have been several BIOS updates since then pertaining to things like SATA/SCSI boot selection being enabled, 'stability' fixes for certain memory modules, improved/expanded cpu support, etc., so it's definitely worth a look. It'd be a good idea to confirm the revision number of your board first since the updates they're offering are revision specific. I'd also look at things like a marginal power supply (has adding a new high capacity drive recently pushed it over the margin?) and loose connections and/or poor quality cables. Memory quality is extremely important, but that's probably not an issue if you've successfully run all those other distributions on the current hardware platform. Also, there is an extensive list of kernel boot parameters in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt that you can use to 'shape' things like acpi and apic and irq polling, etc. The fact that you made more headway installing in 'failsafe' mode is a good clue. Maybe you can experiment with fine-tuning some of these parameters? Finally, while you're experimenting/troubleshooting, each time you've booted a kernel... either the installed system or when running the installer (uses an installation kernel)... check out the alternate consoles for command line prompts (F4 during installation) and kernel messages (F10 in a normal running system... I forget which one during installation.) These can be great sources for feedback and/or even 'poking around' for clues from the command line when you run into difficulties. hth & regards, Carl