Black Screen on Boot

[RDReavis]

Whenever I try to boot Knoppix off of the cd, I press enter at the first screen, and then it goes blank. I have tried resizing the screen size, and failsafe mode. When booting in failsafe, I get something like this:

*Loads of random addresses*
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address d8000000
printing eip
c0108bf8
*pde=00000000

I am running a 1Ghz Athlon with a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX and generic plug and play monitor.
And yet it works on my cheaper 900Mhz machine with integrated video.

Have any ideas?
Thanks!

-------------------
Off-Topic Question

Does anybody know where you can get cheap (and new) wholesale laptops? I have a wholesale license, and I would like something more portable than my desktops. Maybe something that can handle other applications...like wardriving.

[eon]

I don't know why knoppix won't boot with your hardware, but you could try
xmodule=fbdev at boot (type that at the boot prompt) or look at the other cheat codes
http://www.knoppix.nl/3.6/knoppix-cheatcodes.txt to see if one of those gets you running. Good luck.

[RDReavis]

Nope, none of the cheat codes seem to work for me. I've tried disconnecting my hard drive and extra ram (as they have caused problems for me in the past).

[ThundaOne]

I had this issue too, with my laptop and my desktop.
For my laptop, it would go blank right after boot: prompt. I found that using the 'knoppix26 acpi=off' combination worked for my laptop.

I use fb1024x768 for my desktop, and it works like a charm.

[RDReavis]

I think my computer is just funky; that doesn't seem to work either This is not a flickering screen, like some of the cheatcodes would fix, I think this may be a monitor or videocard compatability problem.

[eon]

Hve you tried using "expert" at boot?
This will have you step/go through the hardware set up
manually, and then perhaps you can indentify, for certain,
the place where booting fails.

[RDReavis]

I shall try that and update you on my status.

[RacenViper]

I had the same problems with just about any flavor of Linux. Expert mode = Blank screen. So I went with "Failsafe" these are the last lines before it locksup on me

ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APCI timer interrupts
calibrating ACPI timer ...
.....CPU clock speed is 3056.5252 Mhz.
.....host bus clock speed is 0.0000 Mhz
cpu: 0, clocks: 0,slice: 0

Anyways the boot just halts

Thanks for any ideas and help

Dell inspiron 5150 laptop

[eon]

Racen Viper, You might want to google your video system + linux.
I do recall seeing posts here about dell inspiron onboard video incompatibility.
I don't know if kanotix would work on your system but it might be worth a shot.
Good luck

[aznluvsmc]

I also have the same problem on 2 identical laptops.

1.8 GHz Athlon XP-M
64MB ATI Radeon IGP
768MB RAM

After hitting enter on the boot: screen my LCD goes black. I know the CD works as I can use it on my school's computers which run P4 desktops.

Any help is appreciated.