Installing CentOS 6.8 on laptop with USB 3.0

[Rock50d4]

Hi everyone, running into some issues installing CentOS 6.8 on a newer laptop. Need CentOS 6.8 specifically to use with Bhamni for a global health project to provide electronic medical records while doing medical missions in ares with little access.

I've tried every CentOS 6.8 disk (DVD, CD, live, etc) downloaded from multiple mirrors (to avoid corrupt files) and multiple ways of making a live USB (fedora live USB creator, unetbootin, mac disk utility, rufus) and always get the same error:

Code: Select all

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Tainted: G                 W -- -------------------  2.6.32-6423.el6.i686 #1
Call Trace:
 [<c0877b93>] ? printk+0x18/0x1d
 [<c0877abd>] ? panic+0x6e/0x12c
 [<c04670e3>] ? do_exit+0x743/0x750
 [<c043712c>] ? do_group_exit+0x3c/0xa0
 [<c04671a1>] ? sys_exit_group+0x11/0x20
 [<c0409bbf>] ? sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x28
 [<c0b10000>] ? startup_xen+0x0/0x11

I have tried other USB ports without success. I was able to install CentOS 7 without issues and runs well on the laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad T450). The laptop has all usb 3.0 and currently at work I do not have a usb 2.0 machine available (but will try it at home when I get there).

Im thinking it may be due to USB 3.0 based on this (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... os-945814/)

Tried the dracut solution (http://grokbase.com/t/centos/centos/122 ... om-usb-3-0) without success

I am remotely familiar with linux (used to use mint years back primarily) but I have to admit I wasn't particularly fluent in terminal use.

Does anyone have any suggestions or thoughts? Are we stuck investing in an older laptop?