[DONE] Compaq Presario CQ57 won't accept Mageia 5 64 bit

[doktor5000]

I installed Mageia 5 32 bit last night. Unfortunately, I had a lot of problems after burning a DVD. It seems that my new (refurbished) laptop won't accept the 64 bit version. This is a Compaq Presario CQ57, as listed on http://www.cnet.com/products/compaq-pre ... hdd/specs/ with an AMD E-300 dual core 64 bit CPU. My laptop is fitted with 4Gb of RAM and has a 500Gb hard drive.

Before installing Mageia 5 32 bit edition, I installed Linux Mint 17.3 KDE 64 bit. I later resized my Linux Mint partition down to about 250Gb, giving about 250Gb to Linux Mageia.

I noticed there were various options available which I didn't understand. Is there some way I can get my laptop to accept Mageia 5 64 bit edition?

[doktor5000]

Without you providing some more details, what the "lot of problems after burning the DVD" means in particular it's pretty hard to help.
Does the system boot in UEFI or legacy/BIOS mode?

[paulz]

OK, I should have said that it took me some time before I realised that the 64 bit edition wouldn't work, which included me re recording the DVD, then I eventually had to download and burn the 32 bit eidtion onto it.

This laptop hasn't got a UEFI BIOS. I can't check what type of BIOS it is at the moment because GParted is trying to repair my corrupted Linux Mint partition, which is mentioned in another post. I think the BIOS is called "Insyde" or "Insyde20", which I'd never heard of before.

[doktor5000]

Well you still didn't mention what happened during boot of the 64bit image.

And did you check the md5sum for the 64bit image you downloaded previously? Could have easily been a borked download ...

[paulz]

My attempts at installing the 64 bit image nearly always stopped when my DVD drive stopped spinning, then I was just left watching my stopwatch running until about 2 minutes after my DVD drive stopped spinning. Once, I managed to see a read error message, which only became visible after pressing the ESC key to see if anything happened.

I don't understand about md5sum, but I downloaded the 64 bit image more than once and re recorded the DVD from different images.

[benmc]

Would you like to try installing from USB?

Mint tool "USB image writer" should be on your live Mint DVD, look under "applications"=> "system".
Write the USB.
Reboot, then set your BIOS to enable USB boot,

[paulz]

I have now solved all my problems with Mageia! Here's how I did it. After about 24 hours of struggling with Mageia, I inserted a Linux Mint KDE 64 bit Live DVD, which I prepared under Mageia, but I'd re recorded that DVD a few times. The installation always stopped at "Copying files...26%". After this, my hard drive was unbootable and I couldn't even get Firefox to visit any web site except the Mint home page, because it crashed. Next, I arranged to meet up with a friend whose desktop PC building course I did a year ago, so he could give me a working Linux Mint KDE 64 bit. I picked up the Mint DVD, brought it home and installed it, using the whole hard drive, wiping out all the corrupted files that were there. Since doing this, I haven't had any problems with Mageia at all. I advise everyone reading this to do the same.

[doktor5000]

This may be a dumb question, but you now have a working Mint and a working Mageia installation, or did you wipe the Mageia installation with the new Mint install?

Apart from that, please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [SOLVED], thanks

[paulz]

I've now got a working Mint partition which uses the whole hard drive. I've given up on Mageia altogether because I think the way it's set up causes unnecessary stress.