ZoneMinder Forums

I recently downloaded the ZoneMinder livecd by Ross Melin, v1.22.2 and every time i boot it im ending up in a blank black screen with no input response. i admit to knowing nothing about linux and would be grateful for some help. it is my understanding i don't have to preinstall mandriva as that livecd has a streamlined version of it on it.
All help appreciated and sorry for my n00bishness.
Dave

There could be a few reasons for this. What Mainboard do you have and does it have a current bios?
Just to make sure, when you boot, do you get post messages before it tries to load the CD?
What if anything happens after post?
We would deffinatly need to now more about your hardware.

See this post to help give you a better idea how to post trouble shooting info.
http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6427
Regards,
Corey

its run on a p4, proprietry board, 256 of ram, onboard graphics.
i get to the boot screen though, and have tried it with safeboot, quick install, bootcodes, and it runs through bootup and halfway through bootup after iv chosen the profile, i get a black screen.
sorry should have been more specific.
thanks for your help

Anamax wrote:proprietry board

Ew, That could be a problem, what chipsets are on this board?
Have you tried disabling acpi ( linux noacpi )?

yeah its a dell job, not a great fan of it to be honest, how do you mean disable the acpi?
thanks

Dell should work fine, make sure you have the latest BIOS installed.
If that still does not work you can try to disable acpi at the boot prompt:
Boot: linux noacpi
Although I don't think that would be the issue with P4 mainboard.
Dell's have always been good to me and I have 4 of them with no problems.

it was the mainboard, its installing fine on a compaq evo. and i tried it with boot noacpi and had no luck, thanbks for your help though

It sounds like the bootup works until the graphic interface (X server) starts. If you want to try again with the Dell you could try "xdrv=vesa" and/or "vga=771" as additional bootswitches.

If still no joy you could add the boot switch "3" which will give you a console login screen. Login with "root" and password "qwerty". Then you can run the command XFdrake and try to configure the X server with that utility. Then the command "telinit 5" will start the X server and you can proceed with installing if you choose.

If all of the above fails then Im out of suggestions

thanks for that ross, appreciate it. will give it a go and let you know