OK, so I am tyring to install DSL on an old crap computer, and as my title suggests, it's not working so well.

I had to use Smart Bootmanager since this computer cannot boot directly boot from CD, but after booting the DSL live CD up, I installed it onto the HD, and it rebooted. While it was rebooting, it spit out the CD, and froze while saying "preparing to reboot". I let it sit for a while, then turned the computer off manually, and turned the computer back on, but the computer will not start. It won't boot off the HD at all, of course I can still force it to boot off the CD.

So, how can I get it to install properly?

Pentium 1 120mhz
32MB RAM

I hate to guess and send you down the wrong path but it would probably help if you had twice as much memory.

Thier site says it can install on 16MB of RAM, so that really would not be the cause of the problem, would it?

what exactly happens when you try to boot it off of the harddrive, and can you boot the harddrive in a different computer?

When I attmep to boot of the HD like normasl after installing DSL, it gets to the point where the BIOS is trying to boot the HD, and it just sits there.....it does nothing

if I use Smart Bootmanager and select the HD, it says "Disk error 0x01"

Windows 98 was on this computer and it booted just fine

did you do a normal install or a frugal install?

I right clicked the desktop and navigated to install to hard drive

I've installed DSL on a ten years old Toshiba Satellite 310CDS with 32MB RAM and 199MHz CPU, here's what I did:

I don't know if you can boot your computer from a USB-Stick, I can't so I have DSL on a normal CD.
Boot from the CD, once the boot loader menu shows up, enter 'install' and press enter.
If that doesn't work, pass 'install' to the Kernel.

Now the Kernel should boot.

Once boot is finished, you should see a menu with 15 options ('DSL Install Options').

I suggest setting the partitions first (option 12) on your hard drive (hda if you just have one).
You need a bootable partition (Flags: Boot), I just have one, it uses up the entire 6004.46MB of my Hard Drive. Remember to use '[ Write ]' to actually write the partition table, otherwise nothing will be changed.

Once you're back in the 'DSL Install Options' menu, use option 3 (Install to Hard Drive) to install DSL to your hard drive.

It will format the partition it needs.

I'll be at my parents home for a bit, but I will try this when I get back

Yay it works! Don't why the gui way didn't work, but oh well, thanks for your help.....this is the third forum I have come to for this, and the only one that gave me any replies at all....

...anytime, you may want to check out my blog on this:
http://bi-ba-bo.blogspot.com/2007/03/dads-laptop.html