Q4OS Forum

BeHappy

Member

Registered: 2020-04-01

Posts: 2

Cannot install on old Compaq 6720s laptop (black screen at install)

Hello,

I know several Linux distro but this is my first attempt installing Q4OS.

The laptop is Compaq 6720s from the Windows Vista era.
The processor is an Intel Celeron 560 (1 core/1 thread).
In the system specifications as given by the BIOS, I cannot see any dedicated graphic card.

Windows Vista installs without issue.

The version I tried installing is the lastest: Q4OS Centaurus, Trinity, install-cd - 32bit / i386 ... 434 MBytes

The MD5 checksum of the ".iso" image was checked at was correct.
The installation CD was burnt at slow speed and the media was checked after being burnt.
The hard drive is 100% ok after low level scan (No bad sectors and all S.M.A.R.T. values are OK).

Briefly after choosing the installation mode, the screen become black (but still with backlight) and no message is printed.
The same with all the three kind of install: manual, fully automated, and preinstall (oem).

The last one that I tried installing was the "preinstall (oem)" that one can find as advanced installation mode.
I could hear from the CD that some kind of install was happening, but the screen remained blank (i.e. black).

When starting the computer now, I can see some messages printed when Linux is starting.
The third message I can see is "Recovering journal from /dev/sda1".
The last message printed is "Started udev Kernel Device Manager".
Then, the screen goes black again.

Thank you for your support.

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,993

Re: Cannot install on old Compaq 6720s laptop (black screen at install)

Without the live-cd version it can be very tricky to trace a problem like this, but what I would try is using the last live-cd version for a 32 bit system, this might allow you to at least start booting into an environment that is more predictable, then you should be able to get more hardware specific information in case you need some specific driver of firmware to allow system to boot properly.

The error messages you have (recovering journal...) would indicate that you have a system installed, or part of it at least, so could just be a grub problem, again an issue that a live-cd might be able to fix but this time I'm not sure the 2.x version will work but my guess is that it would.

Also I recall a similar problem some time ago and that resolution was to reset the laptop BIOS back to defaults, save and reboot and it might solve this issue, although you might want to either backup or take note of the current settings before doing this, just in case your laptop has specific boot requirements.