No operating system

Hi all,

i guess that my user names explains alot but i'd really like some help please.

i have an old computer that i'm trying to bring back to life. its a HP Vectra VL800 desktop. the motherboard is the original and i've managed to obtain a copy of the VL800 service manuel.

when started the computer fires up and goes straight into the HP inevent menu which lets me go into the setup etc.

If i leave it run it states that i do not have any operating system or operating system not found.

I do not have windows on this machine, do not have any back up cd's for windows but would like to install another operating system on it to see if i can get it run an older game. (day of defeat).

i used to run this game on this machine a while ago but purchased another computer which i'm using now.

I've tried in my attemps to install ubuntu and fedora through the bios settings and actually to my amazement have run the setup process through a burned cd that i copied however the system doesn't appear to want to run these operating systems.( it's very sluggish and extremely slow - only telling me later that there are files missing from the install - gnome etc)

so the question that i think that i'm asking (apologies for being vague) is "is there a recommended operating system apart from windows that i can run on this older machine in order to get day of defeat working?

any responses would really be appreciated.

many thanks

 

Greetings, Complete NOOB.

Have you tried running one of the Linux distros from a live environment - in other words, from the CD/DVD instead of trying to install it to the hard drive?

Reason I ask - the fact that there's no Windows OS on the drive doesn't mean that the HD is empty. There may be remnants of a prior installation that need to be cleaned, and they may be interfering with the Linux install.

I'd try booting to a Linux disk, see if the OS runs well from there. If so, then you can try mounting and formatting the HD in preparation for an install.

 

By the way: I've found Mint 10 (Julia) to be very user friendly.

 

I agree with Caliban, Mint is an easy distro to learn and will run sweetly on that rig being that it is not a big OS.

I have it running on my spare PC.