Mel

Most distros will do all the formatting for you. You will have options; 1.the drive to install on 2.use entire drive or 3.Use free space on drive or 4.Resize existing partitions to make room for linux If you decide to resize an existing partition,make sure you defrag that partition first or you will likely lose critical data.There is a chance you will lose data any time you resize a partition. If you don't want to keep the windows partition;just let linux format the drive for you.

Looking for modem drivers? Try " http://www.modem-help.com/ ". It takes a little exploring to learn to find what you're looking for. It took me about 15-20 minutes to learn to get around.Just read everything and it shouldn't a problem. I found a driver for my Ali Corp.,smartpci561. I haven't installed it yet so can't say how well or if it works but the site does have a long list of modem drivers once you figure out how to find them.I even came across some winmodem drivers. If the site doesn't have your driver it gives links to manufacturer sites that may have it.

Interesting. Other than playing a couple games,I do everything I do with windows just as well with linux and all linux has cost me is monthly ISP rates, which I will have with or without linux.

NTFS and linux Just commenting here. I've read posts that indicate others have had the same problem I've had reading NTFS files with linux. I COPY the files I want to w*n 98 where linux can easily read and Copy them. ( The key word here is "COPY" since 98 uses fat32 and a file "moved" to or from a fat32 partition has a chance of ending up in 'never never' land.( Where you'll 'never never' find it again.)) Mel

Your installer should have a partition tool which will reformat the partitions.If it won't reformat the partitions,just delete the partitions you want to use and create them again.Either way will result in empty partitions.Then install using the "use existing linux partitions" option. I don't have SUSE but one or the other of the two ways above works with every distro I've tried.

Hi ,Jim Good to be back. I see I did say copy.Should have said "read and write". I read some posts that have my interest on MEPIS. I'm on slowwire now but will be at my daughter house tommorrow morning to DL the new MEPIS distro. I only stopped using MEPIS because the installer I had wanted to take over the whole HD. I like all the linux distros I've tried.I think Mepis is the best for first time immigrants from that other OS.It can be easily navigated by refugees from other desktop systems.Even MDK10,which I love,can be confusing to noobees. How does the new Mepis kernal handle SIS stuff ? That was my only real problem with the old version I have.

Did you pick and choose what you wanted installed? Those error messages indicate that the default location for LC_MESSAGES doesn't exist. I don't have MDK10 installed right now so I can't find it for you.If u can find the default path ,it can be changed to another directory or you can create the default directory.

Well,I'm back. Just want to say hello to all and see if Soulnothing reached "Super Geek" status yet. I've been busy getting a lot of tests and making a couple doctors richer.Also, my wife had a bout with the local cable company for overbilling and shut everything down,including my internet. I'm using a phone isp now and it is ssslllooowww. Rather than demonstrating my ignorance,I'm just going to catch up on the posts for now. When my wife calms down enough (if ever) to make it safe for me,I'll get back on cable. Mel

Don't know if it will work with yours but when I have that problem, I set up my monitor as "Generic" and set the resolution and refresh rate to something supported by my monitor. If it is a new monitor you can also try setting monitor choice to plug n play. I run Mandrake 10 on my permanent Linux machine.Mandrake10 has found and set up everything I tried it with.Mandrake finds and properly sets some hardware other distros have problems with. Some say FC 2 is better but I haven't had much luck with it.

Hi, mumtaz I'm running a SIS system similar to yours.Trying to install Mandrake 9 was a nightmare but Mandrake 10 was a dream. I just booted with mandrake10 disk 2,answered a couple questions and swapped disks when prompted. MDK10 installer found and set up everything perfectly.(Even a couple things I didn't know I had.)

Anybody had this happen? I insalled FC2 on hdb which is an old 10gig HD.The install went fine and everything looked good 'til I tried to boot the other OS. Only problem, when it formatted hdb,it also formatted the first 10 gigs on hda.Well,that other OS, on hda, didn't like that much so I had to reinstall it. Does anyone have even a vague idea what may have caused that ?

Thanks ,Danleff That's exactly what I did.I set it to delete existing Linux partitions on hdb and do an auto format.I thought I was taking the lazy way. FC2 should still be ok on hdb.Going to try the rescue disk tonight and see if it will install the bootloader without messing with the other OS.

Originally posted by AaronFromPA: Quote: Hello all, I am guessing you can help me with this one as I am a blantent new guy to the linux world having only run basic installs of RH. I have decided to sit down and really delve into linux and wanted to try the Suse distro for a change of pace. Unfortunatley I cant get the boot CD to work. I have downloaded the boot.iso file and burned it to a CD. When trying to boot from this CD I get the standared no OS found. I am at a bit of a loss and in unfamiliar territory I think I have followed all the directions from the site properly but any insite would be great. Thank you all, try to be gentle with me . . Is the boot cd all you downloaded and burned ? If so you don't have an OS.The SUSE version I DL'd has 7 ISO's, each of which is a full 700 meg CD when burned.I just used the boot CD to boot SUSE after I installed. I didn't use it much though cause it couldn't find my HP R60 scanner.

Will someone familiar with Dell P4 HT please help vipzzz in "Problem Installing Mandrake 10.0". I believe he needs to set BIOS to boot from CD and I am not familiar with that machine . Thanks

If you put cd2 in the cd drive and restart your computer with CD2 in the CD drive,it should boot from the cd and not use dos or windows at all. If it won't boot from CD ,you may need to set boot order in BIOS.Make sure your CDRom is above your harddrive in the boot list in BIOS.(Most new computers are set to check floppy first then harddrive.You need to set BIOS to check cdrom before harddrive.Then you can boot from cdrom.)

When you insert the CDs and open them from windows or DOS, does the volumn name end with ".iso"? If it does then you didn't create the install disks,you just copied the files to CD. If the volumn name ends with .iso, leave a post and someone will explain how to burn an iso to disk. I assume from your post that you use XP.If your cd burner does not have a "Burn ISO" option, I find 'CDBurnerXP Pro' works very well and it's free on the internet.If you can't find it,leave a post and I'll get a URL for you. If you do have the ISO option on your burner, Some cdwriters don't burn well at higher speeds so set your burning speed to 8x or lower.

Try booting from Cd2.If that doesn't work try booting from CD1.I could be wrong but I think the floppy is for an ftp install. If you're totally new to Linux,please describe your hardware (computer brand/model,processor (AMD athlon,pentium etc.), monitor brand/model etc.) Some solutions are hardware specific. Please read "NEED HELP" in "General Linux". More information = more and better help. I do all my linux trials on a seperate drive so I'll leave more specific help to other users.I think Dapper Dan,Danleff or Bernard will be your best help on this one.

Thanks,Bernard You just helped me much more than I could have possibly helped you.Explaining how you checked that drive solved a problem I had with a little project.I had forgotten that some relatively recent power supplies have a 3.5 volt output. On checking I found I was connecting 3.5V where I needed 5. Thanks again.

Originally posted by valentine: Quote: Nice thanks, i've been doing a lot of research, and i found that the processor archetecture stems from an old class. I used to have an old 286, and after 486 they started using fancy names like pentium etc. As far as i can tell the AthlonXP 2400+ is an i686. Does that mean that a i386 distro won't run as well as say an i586? Although my experience is limited to Intel and AMD processors,in my experience all the processors appear to be backward compatible.The compatible issues appear to be in the OS kernal.So ,in effect,the i686 kernal is designed to take advantage of the newer features and speed of the i686 processor class but is incompatible with older processors. Although you can use,say,i386 version,it will be niether as fast nor effecient as the i686 version because it can't use the more recent features of the i686 processor. . NOTE; The model number at the end of the processor name is misleading,since many users think that is the processor speed which is substantialy slower. For example,my AMD Athlon 2000+ is actually rated somewhere between 1600 - 1700 mhz. Yours is probably a little faster. . Oh,yeah, The answer to your question is,yes,the i686 version will be faster and more efficient than the i386 version with your i686 processor.

If you installed Mandrake 10 and after reboot mouse doesn't work or computer appears to have locked up ; 1.Use 'tab' key to select "Configuration Tools" in the "Welcome to Mandrake Linux" window that should be in the center of your screen. 2.hit "Enter" 3. Enter root password you chose during install and hit enter. 4.Use "Tab" key to select "Hardware" and hit 'enter'. 5.Use "Tab" key to select "Mouse" and hit 'enter'. 6.Use "Tab" key to select your mouse type and hit enter. 7.Test mouse.If it works,click OK and close window,if not try another mouse type. . My brain seems to work in slow motion on this subject,I should have thought to post this a month ago.Sorry 'bout that.

My AMD Athlon XP 2000+ works fine with all those plus i686. I don't know what changes were made in the 2400+, though.

Thanks for the update.It may help a noobee who may not otherwise think to try arrow keys if tab doesn't work. Different archetectures work different. If tab doesn't work try arrow keys and vice versa. I hope the kernal change solved your problems.

Hi,niels82 . I had that problem when I first started using mandrake 10. What kernal are you using ?Are you using 3rd party programs? The reason I ask is if you are using kernal 2.6, you have to use what you can get from Mandrake. If you just did the default install then you installed kernal 2.6 which is not compatible with 3rd party software. If you selected LSB on the "Package Group Selection" screen ,you should have kernal 2.4 installed which is compatible with 3rd party software. If not,then you have kernal 2.6 which is very flaky. If you download applications from the web and have kernal 2.6 installed then changing to kernal 2.4 should solve your problem. (LSB is 'Linux Standard Base",which is essential if you use 3.rd party apps.and is not supported by mandrake kernal 2.6 .) . At the first screen you get when booting from install disk, type "linux noauto" at the prompt and hit enter.(If autodectect has a problem with you hardware,it will lockup.You can set up hardware with "system/configuration/configure your computer/" after installing.)

All the recent kernals will support HP hardware but although all the distros claim to support HP hardware,Mandrake10 is the only distro I found that will properly set up HP stuff with system configuration GUI.The other distros require manual configuration of dependancies and kernal entries. At the risk of revealing my age,I will say,the last time I actually did any programming was way back when,to get anything really useful,I had to use a combination of CPM,Basic and ML with a lot of gosubs and calls.(That's a few years.)I think c was just coming out. I assume there are a lot of good programmers around now who never heard of CPM or gosub. My last post is the impression I got from replies from HP while trying to get this hardware to work. BTW,last time I tried, kernal 2.4 ,which I use now, seems stable, 2.6 tends to take side trips into never-never land.Also 2.4 handles 3rd party stuff OK while 2.6 has problems.

There's probably nothing wrong with the cd burner except that it's an HP. For about a 4 or 5 year period HP was deeply involved with what they percieved as the dominant OS.As a result,firmware was designed specificaly for Windows.The firmware and drivers became "propriatary"(probably ain't spelled right) which means that although it can be modified,it is illegal to do so. At the beginning of that period,many linux users still considered themselves "elite" and wanted to maintain that status.Anyone inquiring about linux on those "elite" sites would be snubbed and often outright insulted unless they appeared to have knowledge of the terminology used by the linux community. Then the unexpected happened.Some people with a combination of intellegence , common sence,willingness to help others and the knowledge that ignorance is not stupidity, became interested in linux and had the audacity, patience and perserverance to overcome the snide remarks and insults and become very knowledgable in linux. Many of those people are now giving thier time on sites like this one to help people like us .Those are people like Danleff,Dapper Dan,The administrators of this site and many others to whom I would like to to extend a sincere thank you for the great help. Also,to jimf43,I sincerely apoligize for the way I misstyped your username,it was not intentional.I noticed it when browsing yesterday and realized it could be construed as derogatory. Due ,in large part,to users on these sites,HP,along with other hardware and software companies,suddenly woke up,looked around and realized "Hey ,there is an alternative OS out there and it appears to be more stable and reliable than the present dominant OS !" Recent HP hardware is linux compatible but as one who uses HP hardware,I suggest, before buying used HP hardware,check linux sites for compatility issues and fixes.