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Topic: Gparted won't boot - on some older machines

I have two older computers where Gparted won't boot.
One is an old Dell laptop another a Compaq Deskpro.
The Deskpro BIOS is circa 1998 the Dell 2000.
I admit to being a computer nut and have three
more box's all of which successfully burn and boot
Gparted CD's. I think this problem has more
to do with older BIO's and may be found in other
Distros.

Lets concentrate on the Deskpro. It's a P-350
with 192MB DRAM, booted, ran, loaded and installed
Ubuntu 5.1 just fine. 3 weeks ago I used:

http://www.killdisk.com

wiped it clean, used

http://www.ranish.com/part/

to create a single ext2 partition and then successfully
booted and then installed to HD:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

and that runs wonderfully well. Another interesting
thing is if I boot and run:

http://www.puppylinux.com/

it has within it an older copy of Gparted that works
just fine.

If I attempt to boot the latest versions of Gparted
on these two machines it goes through the first menus
then hangs in the following loop:

mount: /dev/hdc is write protected, mounting read only
(start repeat)
ide: cmd 0x28 timed out
hde: DMA interrupt recovery
hdc: lost interrupt
(repeat)

This is the case in the latest version of Gparted

gparted-livecd-0.2.5-5.iso

burned to CD-R and works just fine on three other
machines. I have tied the run from RAM option
with the same results.

I've seen a bunch of ways to try and get around this
error none of which have worked for me. Using the
Ranish Partition Manager ( kind of old and clunky )
I can do what I need to do with these older machines.
Is there something we can come up with here to
make Gparted work here.

BTW FWIW both of these machines will boot the
Mandriva 2006 CD-1 install disk and I can set up
partitioning with that.

I would prefer to abandon old and clunky Ranish
Partman and move to Gparted exclusively.

Thanks - Wilcal

"DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"
is my friend