On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Jason Hsu, embedded engineer, Linux user <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> wrote: > Do you have at least 512 MB of RAM? Given that the computer came with Windows 2000, I think there's a good chance that it doesn't, in which case it has no business running Ubuntu. In my opinion, Ubuntu is bloatware. It has its merits, but running on very old computers is not one of them. Ubuntu is roughly as resource-hungry as Windows XP. I really don't think that was necessary. Your opinion may be that Ubuntu is bloatware, but that does not give any actual reason for why he would be unable to boot from a live CD for troubleshooting and recovery purposes. Especially considering that Ubuntu's website specifically states that the minimum requirement for a desktop system is 64MB of RAM. (They also state that 512 is recommended, but that doesn't mean the system won't boot without it.) > On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 08:33:00 -0500 (CDT) > Thomas Rieff <trieff at greencaremankato.com> wrote: >> So no problem, I will just backup the files and reload with xp. >> Well it is currently very flakey with the current os, so I dropped a ubuntu 9.04, 9.1, 10.04 live cds in and thought I would save the files that way. Ubuntu live cd won't load. I have tried many different things, including the video card corrections, but it stops at "checking 'hlt' instruction..." >> Maybe the hard drive is bad, but it should load a live cd??? >> Maybe the motherboard or cpu is bad, how do I tell or test??? Given what you say, reinstalling and trying other OSes doesn't resolve your issue, so it seems likely that it is hardware related. One of the first things I would do is try the Memtest option, which I believe is on the Ubuntu boot CD. It should identify bad memory, if that is your issue, and that would probably be the cheapest thing to replace. The error you mentioned may also have something to do with your CPU. You may want to search for that error, and you may find some helpful information on that. - Justin