some of my gateway laptops refuse to install f11a i386

[John Summerfield]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:

One thing I've missed since leaving the Fedora list, maybe the only 
thing, is the interesting problems you have, Robert!


> On Tue, 3 Mar 2009, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> 
>> Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca> wrote:
>>>   i am having some of the strangest behaviour on my collection of
>>> gateway mx7120 laptops.  since they're 64-bit amd athlon mobile
>>> processors, i should theoretically be able to install either of 32- or
>>> 64-bit f11 alpha on them, no?
>>>
>>>   however, over yesterday and today, i've found at least three of them
>>> that will, under no circumstances, even *look* at the i386 version of
>>> the install DVD and will boot to the hard drive, but will happily
>>> install off the x86_64 version. i take that i386 install DVD, put in
>>> what should be an identical laptop next to it, and it will install off
>>> of it just fine.  i put it back in the original laptop, it's ignored.
>>> what the heck?  and i now have at least three laptops that seem
>>> utterly uninterested in the i386 f11alpha DVD.
>> Can the errant machines read/mount the DVDs? I had (otherwise identical)
>> machines where some would read a CD while others didn't recongnize
>> it. Haven't seen such with DVDs (or with CDs for quite some time),
>> but...
> 
>   i did test that yesterday and, weirdly, the DVDs that couldn't be
> booted from couldn't be mounted either *on that same machine*.  but
> they would work just fine on another laptop.  i've never seen anything
> like it.

Plan b.
Burn fresh x386 media.
Plan c.
Brush up on network booting.
Plan d.
Create a bootable USB disk. The systemrescuecd instructions will 
probably work, you just want a big enough USB disk.





-- 

Cheers
John

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