2 OLD COMPUTERS

[crosscourt]

Hes fine as both systems support PAE,(Athlon XP cpus versus Pentium M/Celeron M cpus mentioned in the link above) to my knowledge as I owned similar systems back then. Many distros allow installing from the boot screen such as Mint and Lubuntu for instance.
I own a lot of older system and typically Ive had better luck with older Ubuntu based distros such as 12.04 and 14.04 versus Debian based distros.
Lets face it though, these are 16+ year old systems. Even Pentium 4 and Pentium D systems have issues with present distros. When people ask me how old can you go, my response is nothing older than Intel Conroe Core cpus and even then, you still see some issues depending on the motherboard being used.

One of the concerns I also have is the FX5200 card youre running in that system could also be an issue if the distro tries to use the wrong driver. If these systems have integrated graphics on the mobos you might want to pull the FX5200 and use the IGP instead.

Were you able to run a live session with any distro with these systems?

[dai_trying]

One thing I wold try is to reset the BIOS to defaults, there is usually an option in the bios menu to do this. After reset I would not try to run the already installed system but would try another installation to see how it goes.

[crosscourt]

Id look thru the bios before I would instantly go to defaults. Many times bios defaults wont work with the hardware installed such as video cards or memory, without changes(bios defaults were originally designed to work with the base configuration of the system as shipped). If you do want to try defaults and dont see an option, you can always unplug the system and remove the CMOS battery or use the bios jumper on the motherboard to return to defaults.

Many times Ive had to update bios to get systems to work with more current distros but in this case youre talking about a 16 year old system.

[CaptNoize]

CC,
You hit the damn nail on the head,son..(as Stone Cold Steve Austin would put it )..! I remember talking with you one other time about using older versions of Ubuntu,so I dug thru my old discs,and came up with Ubuntu Studio 12.02 and 14.04. So, I removed the new HD I installed yesterday,and reinstalled the original one. Like Dai suggested, I checked the Bios,and they were already set to the default mode. I loaded Ubuntu Studio 14.04 and started the process. The OS loaded perfectly. It went thru the process,and loaded the updates. It finished, I rebooted,and and did some more updates. Everything seems to be working,except FireFox ...it opens...,but keeps crashing,and closing. I might have to load a different browser. Does FF still work with these 32 bit machines..?? I thought FF ESR still did..? I didn't get to try to load it on the other machine. But, I know you're all correct when you say to use older versions on these machines. I'll let you know when I load it on the other machine,and the results. Thanks for everyone's input...!

[crosscourt]

Glad that worked and Firefox doesnt support 32bit any more but Pale Moon does if Im not mistaken. My favorite Is Lubuntu older versions because its so light.

[CaptNoize]

Where do I look in synaptic package manager for Palemoon...? Does Chromium work with 32 bit...?

[crosscourt]

Youll have to get Pale Moon from here, www.palemoon.org
I dont use it because installing it is a hassle. I tend to use older versions of Firefox/ESR because what does it matter as Im running 12.04 and neither the distro nor the browser are secure due to their age.

Chromium doesnt support 32bit.

[CaptNoize]

OK...thanks so much, CC...! Is there any other browsers that work with 32 bit....?

[crosscourt]

Slimjet might but unfortunately welcome to the world of no 32bit support. Midori might be worth a try. Even on my collector systems I have to run much older browsers.

[crosscourt]

Look thru your repos as you might find some other older browsers like Arora. I still run Mint 10 Fluxbox on my older systems.