> >> I'm having some trouble installing SL44 on a new machine from World of
> >> Computers.  As far as WOC are aware, the only difference between this
> >> machine and the one I was asking about in December is that the IDE
> >> DVD-RW drive has been replaced by a SATA drive because they were
> >> having difficulty getting a different version of Linux to communicate
> >> with the IDE drive.
> >>
> >> However, the installation problems are quite different.  Rather then
> >> freezing when I boot from the boot CD without any kernel options, the
> >> install process claims that it cannot find any hard drives.  I tried
> >> using the all-generic-ide and pci=nommconf options - the hard drive
> >> was then detected, but the install process hung while formatting the
> >> root filesystem!
> >>
> >> The relevant hardware details (copied from the quotation) are:
> >>
> >> Motherboard + processor: Intel D965SSCK Core 2 Duo 6300 2MB cache
> >> Hard drive: 160GB - ST3160811AS -  7200rpm Serial ATA
> >> DVD drive: Samsung DVD RW (+/-) OEM Dual Layer/16xDVD+R,8xDVD+RW,16xRead-SATA

> SATA works fine in SL44.  Has worked for a long time now.
> 
> I suggest that you look at the 2 systems and look for bios differences.
> 
> You could also run memtest86 to make sure you do not have a memory 
> problem.

They appear to have different BIOS versions - the newer machine has
MQ96510J.86A.1614.2007.0105.1345 and the older one has
MQ96510J.86A.1545.2006.1101.2008.

Apart from that, everything in the BIOS appears the same.  In
particular, they both have the following settings under Advanced ->
Drive Configuration:

ATA/IDE Mode: Native
Configure SATA as: IDE
S.M.A.R.T: Enable
Hard Disk Pre-Delay: 0

Eva.