installation problem

[Alan Duval]

 > I had a ASUS M3A MB and AMD 64 Athlon X2 CPU which I hadn't used and
 > decided to make a PC using it. It will install WIN XP but Ubuntu 8.04,
 > 9.04, Linux Mint 7, 32 bits, Linux Mint 8 KDE 64 X86, Fedora 10 Live,
 > and Knoppix 6.21 all have problems namely when I open Open Office or
 > Firefox the screen freezes. GOS is the only OS that works without
 > freezing and that was originally installed on a removable HD on another
 > computer with a different MB. This is all strange as GOS is based on
 > Ubuntu 8.04. Does anyone know why opening Open Office or Firefox should
 > cause the system to freeze with the other operating systems?
 >
 > Regards,
 >
 > Alan Duval
 >
 >
 >> I googled your board and suggest you go to this web page and see
 >>which is your board and d/l what you might need.

 >> http://www.asus.com/search.aspx?searchitem=1&searchkey=m3a

 >>Your problem is that Windows can load but Linux can not. Find something
 >>that talks to this.

 >>73 Karl


Googled for an answer but couldn't find one. Then again I'm not the best 
at searching the internet.



 >>>Have you discarded hardware issues? Perhaps you should run Memtest
 >>>from the Grub screen for some hours and check if your memory chips are
 >>>really fine. Linux is less forgivable with faulty hardware than
 >>>Windows.

 >>>-- L M Nicolosi, Eng


Ran Memtest but no problems.



 >>>>Oh, what you just wrote reminded me about something I learnt very 
early
 >>>>when I started with Linux.

 >>>>>This may now be outdated with the improvements in the kernel, I don't
 >>>>>know, but Linux expects that the BIOS has full control over the
 >>>>>computer's resources. This means that you should not have in the BIOS
 >>>>>the setting that the computer is using Plug-n-Play operating system -
 >>>>>like Windows. Change this setting this setting to "not using PnP 
OS" or
 >>>>>whatever the BIOS has. Windows will still function perfectly.

 >>>>>BC


Checked BIOS settings --- OK



 >>>>>>This doesn't seem to be a requirement lately:

 >>>>>>https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/installation-guide/i386/pre-install-bios-setup.html

 >>>>>>This link provides interesting (legacy?) advices on BIOS config.

 >>>>>>-- L M Nicolosi, Eng.

 >>>>>>>Thanks for this.

 >>>>>>>But doing what I have been doing for years hasn't hurt anything 
:-) .

 >>>>>>>Overall though, what that page is showing is that Linux expects 
things
 >>>>>>>to be where they should be, like RAM without any holes or have 
video etc
 >>>>>>>not shadowed in different parts of RAM. Perhaps whoever wrote 
that page
 >>>>>>>forgot about the PnP matter :-) .

 >>>>>>>BC


Thanks for everyone's advice. I have interspersed my replies above.
This is a strange motherboard. I can probably get by using GOS which as 
I said is installed on a removable HD and was originally installed when 
on another computer with a different motherboard. However even it froze 
on one occasion and as this computer is to be installed in an office 
with access to another computer I really don't want any problems. 
Perhaps I should replace the motherboard but how would I know whether a 
new motherboard would allow installation of Ubuntu?

Alan