New install problem

[cheltor]

Hi, I am looking for an alternative to that dreadful Windows 8, My machine is a Dell XPS L502X laptop with nVidia. I have created a new 200Gb partition on the hard drive, downloaded the image Sabayon_Linux_10_amd64_G.iso and checked its MD5 which was correct, burnt the image onto a DVD with ImgBurn and it validated OK. Then booted the live image and it came up OK, I set up the wireless network and decided to install on the empty partition on the hard drive. The install completed OK and I got the 'congratulations' message and telling me to reboot to pick up the new installation. Great I thought! So I rebooted and got the splash screen and the bar at the base moved steadily to the end. Then the screen went blank and I got the rotating pointer for about a minute then an arrow pointer and nothing the machine was locked up! the only way out was to crash the machine and restart.
Has anyone any ideas as to what the problem is? I cannot get into the hard drive installation to check it out.

[Ryuno-Ki]

Hm, there are a few post concerning Windows 8 here. I have to admit, that the search sucks at this point, so I just link them here.

• sabayon cant find my OS [Solved]
• How do install on Windows 8 pc?
• My Windows 8 - Sabayon Linux dual boot Desktop

Maybe there's something helpfully for you. I don't have Windows 8 (just Windows XP running in VirtualBox ).
Good luck!

[dunsurfin]

If you're getting as far as the splash screen and progress bar it suggests a possible graphics problem. If you can get to a command prompt from the initial boot screen you can (as root) try

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eselect opengl list

and see if nvidia is there and if it's selected (by an asterisk). If it's not selected then try

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 eselect opengl set nvidia

and reboot.
Something else to try from the CLI is

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equo update

followed by

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equo upgrade 

[cheltor]

Thanks for the advice folks, there is another twist to the problem, I installed the Mate desktop version and it installed with no problems (except I had no sound) but I prefer the Gnome desktop!!!. On the original (Gnome)install problem, as it booted on the live DVD with no problems - I got a properly displayed desktop and was able to run the install to disk program, then does this not indicate that Sabayon was able to work with the nVidia card? So it has to be something that is behaving differently when booting from the hard drive.

[anomaly65]

dunsurfin's advice looks good. Might consider pressing "alt-F2" when the X (xdm/etc) should appear and get a console login, then proceed with his ideas.

Might also post back (from livedvd even) output from "lspci" command to clue everyone in on various hardwire items (like which nvidia card is in the laptop; might be the issue?).

I'm betting a lot of the win8 issues are coming from the expiration of MBR (old enough to get a drink in a bar now) to GPT for the disk partition tables. Gonna be ugly, but gparted cd is a good download and nice gui to resize and squeeze the windows partition down a bit if needed:-)

Cheers,
andy

[DeadlyWolf]

This is an Optimus Dell I believe. As far as I know this is still the way to install the drivers,

http://www.danilopianini.org/index.php? ... &Itemid=23

More information is here

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/X.Org/nVidia_Optimus

[cheltor]

Thanks for the advice everyone. As I said I put the mate version on and that was fine, I then tried to put the gnome version back on to try out you various suggestions only to find that this time I could not even get the live CD to load, the screen froze before it loaded, and I tried several times. So I am giving up on this one. Thanks again.