11.04 on a ten year old Dell laptop?

[David C. Curtis]

On 11-10-20 03:08 PM, Jimt wrote:
>
> I had gotten ubuntu 11.04 up and running.   It is running the older GNOME windowing system.  About 2 weeks ago, following an update/reboot ...
> The reboot hung on "checking battery status".  I am competent with programming and software design, but very new to Linux/Ubuntu.
> This 'hanging' on one issue or another plagued my installing process.
>
> If you have seen/have a workaround .....please pass it along. Thanks.
> Jimt
> ps- I also have a bootable CD of the 10.10 --- it apparently runs OK.
> thanks in advance
>
>

What I would do is boot up again, let it hang. Boot into the live cd, 
mount the HD (could happen automatically) and take a look at the logs in 
/var/log/ especially /var/log/dmesg. The battery status message is just 
the last message that got to the screen, it's not necessarily related to 
the cause of the hang.

Post back if you learn anything more.

P.S. Also Unity/Gnome on a 10 year old machine sounds painful, a +1 for 
Lubuntu as Liam suggested or Xubuntu.