Solving undocumented installation problems

Even if your problem is not described in this chapter, this section can help you to isolate, identify, and solve the problem.

First, you must determine whether you have a software or hardware problem. In general, hardware problems are intermittent, while software problems are consistent.

Hardware and operating systems

The fact that a given piece of hardware works under operating systems such as Windows or Linux is no guarantee that it works with SCO OpenServer.

If you are experiencing problems, check the SCO Certified and Compatible Hardware (CHWP) web page to make sure that you are using compatible hardware.

Identifying the problem

If the system hangs mysteriously, either at boot time, during installation, or shortly thereafter, use these steps to isolate and identify the problem:

1. Confirm that your hardware is listed as supported on the SCO Certified and Compatible Hardware (CHWP) web page. If it is not, we recommend that you use supported hardware.

2. If possible, check a suspected component on another machine with the same configuration (for example, using SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.7).

3. If any third-party drivers are installed, such as those supplied with multiport cards, remove both the driver and the hardware that it controls, relink the kernel, and see if the problem persists.
   

4. Make certain that your devices are recognized at boot time. Watch the boot display, use cat(C) or vi(C) to look at the /usr/adm/messages and /usr/adm/syslog files, or use the hw(ADM) utility.

5. Check for hardware conflicts between components, including DMA, interrupt vectors, and memory addresses. Check for documented incompatibilities or limitations in the SCO Certified and Compatible Hardware (CHWP) web page.

6. If your machine has features such as shadow RAM or memory caching, disable them.