HP Pavillion ze4200 and Slack

[tmcG]

Hi to all in JL land

I have recently purchased a HP Pavillion ze4200 notebook and thought I would dual boot Windows and Slack.

I resized the NTFS partition using Partition Magic successfully to use half the disk and then thought I would boot into the Slack install and create my Linux partitions.

Upon booting with the Slack install CD, it runs though the detection of all hardware and then stops at selection of the keyboard.
It is at this stage none of my keys respond, the keyboard seems to have frozen and you can hear the CD stop spinning.
I then have to turn off the notebook and start again.

I thought maybe the hardware is incompatible with Linux so I booted Knoppix LiveCD and it worked beautifully, it detected my hardware and I was running Linux in minutes.
I also had the same success with using the Slack LiveCD, I could boot off that and use Slack "live".

Has anyone seen something like this before? The only option in the BIOS that I can see that could make a difference is Legacy USB Support and I have booted with this enabled and disabled with no success.

Any advice is appreciated:)

[JohnT]

Disable Plug n Play in the bios.

[tmcG]

Thanks JohnT, I will see if that option is available and post how I go!

[tmcG]

My notebook does not have a pulg and play option to enable/disable.

Does anyone else have any suggestions??:confused:

[JohnT]

Here ya go.....this should keep ya busy for a few minutes.:D
Not exactly the same model, but a path nontheless.

http://jon.madisons.com/2003/06/10/redhat_linux_9_and_hp_pavillion_ze5385.jon

[tmcG]

Thank you very much JohnT, I will give this a shot!

I really appreciate it!:)

[tmcG]

I found this URL which may help and is offering similar advice to JohnT's article:

Slack on HP notebook (http://tuxmobil.org/linux-ze4315us-slack-9.1.html)

I will post my results!:)

[tuxnewb]

The only problem I ever had installing linux on my ze4230 was the fact that I couldnt get the damn PCMCIA wi-fi card to work. Just doesnt recognize it. But yeah if you find anything that would be awesome.

:)

[tmcG]

Last night I successfully installed Slack 9.1 on the notebook!

The trick was as described in the link in my previous post, I needed to disable USB legacy support in the BIOS and boot the Slack kernel with the nousb switch.

I then appened nousb to the kernel so that it wouldn't freeze on reboot and it now runs well!

My sincere thanks to JohnT for his help!:)

tuxnewb, my notebook does not have a wi-fi card in it but maybe you can find an answer at TuxMobil (http://www.tuxmobil.org/). This is where I found the information I needed to get my problem sorted, however, a few of the posts for the HP notebooks do mention problems with the wi-fi support.

I had a look on the net and found this information in relation to wi-fi in the HP 4200 series notebooks. Apparently they got it working under Gentoo:

Gentoo and Wi-fi (http://www.bumbox.net/linuxlaptop/ze4200.html)

And check this out for other flavours of Linux with the 4200 series!

TuxMobil (http://tuxmobil.org/hp.html)

Good luck tuxnewb!:)

[JohnT]

Your welcome, but you have to take the credit for this.....I just pointed you at the ..RTFM..:D

[tmcG]

I am shattered......my first RTFM on the JL boards.:(

Can I ever recover:D

Thanks again JohnT!:)

[AndrewLubinus89]

I had the same problem with my ze4420 until I disabled legacy usb support in the bios...works great now

[JohnT]

Originally posted by tmcG
I am shattered......my first RTFM on the JL boards.:(

Can I ever recover:D

Thanks again JohnT!:) ROTFLMAO.....:D :D