Have you tried the (K)Ubuntu "alternate installer", which is all text
based? I don't know about your particular brand of machine but I ran 11.04
on a 2002 P4 iBuddie laptop until the hardware gave out 4 months ago.
Oneiric (11.10) still installs and runs fine on 2 seven year old mainboards
here.

The main issue is that if the machine hangs on a Live CD,
it's a good indication of some trouble laying in the weeds.

Even on LIVE CDs (modern) that "did" let me perform a Hard drive install,
(such as Crunchbang Statler for example), the machine simplywould not boot.

It would not get past the "waiting for /dev to fully populate" stage.

I will do some reading on what makes the alternate installer
different - maybe there's some checking for ACPI problems?? Who knows for sure.

Emachines are known as cheap computers... but who am I to complain
about that as I normally only buy the cheapest components when I build
or upgreade a system!

Emachines is Acer's low end with Acer being the mid and Gateway the high
end. The build quality is lower and they skimp on features, but they are
decent enough if you do not mind that.

I have never owned one, but have had an Acer laptop which is old, but still
works like new which is to say that it is slow and has a small HD by
today's standards but otherwise in good shape.

I have an Acer and it came with the CD drive disable on boot. Had to go
into bios and change the settings to boot from CD.

Ok, the consensus (and I've got no problem with it) is

"Emachines is Acer's low end with Acer being the mid and Gateway the high
end. The build quality is lower and they skimp on features, but they are
decent enough if you do not mind that."

"Emachines are known as cheap computers."

The two statements above are paraphrased of course, and I do appreciate the
feedback.

I will not in any way argue with said feedback as it seems an accurate
assessment
of my computing situation.

It's an old and low-end machine, and as such, it may perform erratically or
inconsistently
with certain software. The machine shipped out with Windows XP Media center,
and is "vista ready".


So, since 10.04.3 LTS is (so far) rock-solid on this machine, I think I will
keep it,
and look for ways to make the machine perform as fast as possible.

The other problem with low end machines is that they may be inherently
unstable, i.e. prone to unexplained freeze-ups and spontaneous reboots,
sometimes causing loss of data. They can also screw up your operating
system files. If your machine has been reasonably stable for a few months
or years then you have probably got a good one that will be good for many
years to come. That is a big "if" however and you will need to decide what
to do.

However, my limited experience with eMachines owned by a friend and a
service client was this. One was just fine from the beginning and continued
that way. The other was a pack of trouble. I set up Windows, probably '95,
and several apps but in a few days they weren't working. After several
tries I told the customer that it wasn't going to be useful and he should
try and return it. He was disappointed but had bought it on a "Dollar a
day" special. I knew that company would never agree to take it back, even
though clearly defective, which proved to be the case. I never heard from
him again and suspect he just gave up on computers until he had more money.

If you have a problem, don't look to the price tag. Rather test, test,
test. The first test is using the mem test in your boot options. If you
have a bad memory location nothing will work without a flaw. Test the
hard drive for failing surface. These two tests will confirm any simple
problem found on lowest priced equipment that may cause a problem with a
computer. The fact that Ubuntu starts with a test of the hard drive
every so many starts will attest to that. Most other problem will not
discriminate between computer brands or price tags.

I've generally made do with ancient hardware. There are some
headaches but there are a lot of light applications in *nix that make doing
so livable.

It's possible your difficulty in booting a live CD could be a memory
issue. Either not enough, or bad block somewhere. Alternately, I guess
there could be a problem with the newer Kernels and the integrated graphics
on the P4... I've got two pcs with a P4, but both are w/o monitors
currently and running a fairly old kernel. I do know I could boot 10.04
live CD on one of them... but haven't tried later versions (and don't have
a monitor to do it with anymore...).

I also had a laptop with a P3 that would always hang halfway through
loading any live CD I tried except, apparently Puppy Linux... This was due
to some sort of time out on the CD-ROM reader as far as I could tell... I
base that on the fact that Puppy ran entirely from memory with no problems,
and X gui worked fine w/o messing with anything after I installed it piece
at a time from a headless server install.

Anyway, considering the more intense graphic requirements of later than
Ubuntu 10.04, I think you are making a good choice sticking with 10.04.
That is also what I am doing on my machines.

Have a similar problem with an 'old´ Athlon 1GHz -1GB ,old Nvidia graphics
card (AD2002). Ubuntu 12.04 won´t run but 11.10 does and so does Lubuntu
10.04 I 'll keep using the machine on the latter distro.

In the Linux Format mag I read about a successful recycle centre in
Portland OR ,where ´Free Geek´ (mainly volunteers) refurbish old PCs and
re-sell these cheaply with Ubuntu installed . Do you have these centres in
Canada and in the UK ?
If there would be one in the north of Scotland I would be happy to
participate as a volunteer .

There is http://freelinuxbox.org/

http://www.green4good.ca/en_CA/home

I am sure most countries have places. I give mine to Habitat for
Humanity's Restore.

I wouldn't worry about 12.04 not working, it's not due for release for two
months yet. If it's not fixed then, that's the time to worry. Unless you're in
the alpha test programme, in which case report the problem to ensure that it
gets attention.

Have you went into the bios to make sure the CD is the first boot option?

Yes, in the BIOS the CD is the first boot option.

To date, the only CD that has worked flawlessly is
Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS and I'm guessing thatÂ
my machine cannot handle the newer kernels (beyond 2.6 for that matter).

I know it sounds far-fetched, but who knows... for the moment, the computer
does work fine with 10.04.3 installed to the HD and can be left
on there even past "end of support" in April 2013 if I wish.

I would just like to get a modern distro working, but if not,
I'll settle for an older distro that works.