HP Desktop install problem.(Update)

[TNFrank]

Not sure where to put this so I'll put it here. I tried to do an install of PL on a buddies older HP Desktop computer today. The BIOS is a mess and for some reason I couldn't get it to boot to the DVD and there's no USB boot support so I removed the hard drive and brought it home, put it into an enclosure and installed it then put the drive back into the machine.
I started the computer and got a Startpar failure and after doing some research on it there seems to be a driver issue with the nvidia graphics. I rebooted into Recovery mode so I'd be root in terminal and wasn't sure if I even had internet connection. I hooked up and ethernet cable to the modem and computer and did an "ifconfig eth0 up" and sometimes doing an apt-get install I'd seem to get stuff installing but other times I'd get failures to install so I'm not even sure if I'm hooked into the internet or not.
Anyway, somehow I need to verify that I'm on the internet so I can download stuff and then I need some terminal commands to get this Startpar failure sorted out. I did some looking around on the internet but couldn't really find any simple fix but I'm sure there's something that I can do to get things up and running. Thanks in advance for any help ya'll can give me on this little problem.

[TNFrank]

I found this:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=122257&f=46
with this info in it:
Press the 'e' key to edit the boot parameters. Using the cursor keys of your keyboard scroll down to the line that starts with "linux" (red box in the screenshot) and go to the end of that line (red arrow in the screenshot).
Add the boot parameters "nomodeset xforcevesa" (without the quotes, see red box in the screenshot). As you type, it will wrap to the next line on the screen and show a backslash character at the end of the previous line. That's fine. Press Ctrl+X or F10 to continue to boot.

I wonder if adding "nomodeset xforcevesa" will fix things or not?

[TNFrank]

Well, this didn't work and I really am stuck and could use a little help here please.

[TNFrank]

So can NO ONE here help me with this problem??

[dek]

if your computer has a floppy disk drive, and does not support booting from dvd/usb, I used Plop Boot Manager. on older computers can be used to boot from any of the available devices in the system (dvd-rom/usb). plpbt.img write to floppydisk by RawWrite on another Windows machine and boot from floppy on target comp. Will be available to boot from the USB, even if it is not supported in BIOS.
P.S. Method of course through the [censored], but it works.
P.P.S. Sorry for my english. ?

[TNFrank]

Nope, this desktop has no floppy disk drive and from the looks of the BIOS does support booting to DVD/CD drive but I'm not sure if the lens is dirty or what because it simply won't boot to the DVD and it DOES have a DVD-RW drive and not just a CD drive, I triple checked.
Also, it's not my computer, it's over at a buddies house so I don't have ready access to it to do tests and stuff to try and figure out what the problem is. It does have a boot option for "floppy group" so are you saying that'd be the same as USB?? The way I noticed the BIOS set up last time I checked was Floppy Group, CD-ROM Group, HDD-Group.

[jordan]

Can it read a DVD in the drive? If not, then you might consider replacing the drive - I saw some used ones on Amazon for less than $15. Just be sure to get a drive compatible with the connectors in the desktop (IDE/SATA).

[TNFrank]

Can it read a DVD in the drive? If not, then you might consider replacing the drive - I saw some used ones on Amazon for less than $15. Just be sure to get a drive compatible with the connectors in the desktop (IDE/SATA).

My next step is to bring the system home so I can have more time to play around with it and see if I can figure out what's going on. I'm going to try to clean the lens in the DVD-RW drive if I can then I'll see if I can get it to boot from a DVD.
I'm really starting to think that a big part of the "problem" is that the install of the OS to the hard drive was done outside of the system via my laptop and a Live USB so it couldn't sense the system or sensed my laptop's system instead of the actual desktop system.

[TNFrank]

Well, I brought my friend Patrick's HP desktop home with me today to dig a little deeper into why it wasn't working with Point Linux. I cleaned it up a bit more(looks like someone spilled Coke on it or something) and tried a few times to get it to boot to the Point Linux DVD with no success. Finally just for grins I put an Ubuntu 12.04LTS CD into the drive and it booted to it no problem although it was slower then molasses in January. After about an hour and a half I got Ubuntu 12.04LTS installed on the HP and I'm currently doing all the updates and upgrades to it.
I tried to boot to a Linux Mint 13 MATE DVD but it was also a No Go, seems like the DVD drive just doesn't like booting to DVD's for some strange reason. I think I'm going to try to install the MATE desktop onto the Ubuntu 12.04 install so it'll be the same desktop as the Point Linux Patrick is running on his laptop, that way it'll work the same for him.
It's just crazy that a DVD won't boot but a CD will. Oh well, at least I've got it working which is good.

[dek]

DVD disk work in installed system but not boot оr DVD dont open in OS? possibly installed in the computer CD-ROM and DVD-ROM does not?