Hi,

I have downloaded the generic.iso and lets me boot and off the retail DVD, but part way through booting up it has a kernel panic. I have a HP Pavilion DV2840TX if that helps, and the system specifications are as follows:

*Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz T8300
*Intel P965(??) chipset
*PATA DVD burner
*HP Intergrated Bluetooth
*Intel WiFi 4965AGN
*Marvell Yukon 88E8039 PCI-E Ethernet
*NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
*Conexant High Def SmartAudio 221

can you post what the Kernal Panic is stating, as it will help us to be able to figure out what part is causing the panic

The last things it come up with are :

Feb 16 14:55:45 localhost kextd[47]: root filesystem is read-only; skipping kernel link data generation
ACPI_SMC_CtrlLoop::initCPUCtrlLoop - pmCPUControl (PMIOSETPSTATETABLE) returned 0x3cc4980
AppleHDAController::start ERROR no layout-id found.
AppleHDA.kext failed to load: unableto locate 'layout-id' properly.
NTFS driver 2.0 [Flags: R/O].

Why are you using the retail DVD? Use any distro, your specs look great and should work fine.

I want to use the retail disc as I want to be able to update my computer normally. But if I was to use another distro, what one would you recommend??

I recommend you to install retail, but if you wanna try a distro, check iPC or iDeneb