Mandrake is getting REALLY annying...more annoying than windoze XP! It's REALLY starting to get me mad now. Every weekend I have to re-install it for some stupid reason, when really all I should have to fix is the bootloader! First I installed 9.2 because 10.0 runs too insanely slow on this comp. Then I tried to make a live CD. That took 8 or 9 reinstalls and a few weeks, it kept getting screwed up, finally I got it stable, though I never did get that liveCD made...and now I am getting more RAM on monday, so I decided I was gonna try to play Everquest on this comp...so I installed winXP (I was using 98, but my ethernet card and another half of my comp won't work on it...but I didnt use it really, so I didn't care)...and that screwed up my bootloader. I reinstalled that, and you would THINK it would work, but all that did was f*ck up BOTH my installs of Linux! 2 totally separate hard drives, one can't even be accessed by windoze, so don't say installing XP screwed it up. It's giving me some sh*t about needing to pass 'init' for that one...and some other stupid error when I try to boot the other one, and it will not let me reinstall them!
Can someone recommend a more stable and durable distro PLEASE!?!

edited for content - tyme

Yep, any single distro.....

You installed XP, it wrote over you boot sector, changed the order of partitions and your blaming MANDYY ???

The reason its complaining is after renaming partitions it has changed the location of /boot and it cant find init....

Your easiest solution is FAQ'd and its using the rescue mode to repair lilo.

Most of the mistakes are your own.
The LiveCD? you were making the mistakes there.
Installing XP? That will always stuff up linux. not just the bootloader. It will renumber partitions and the like, and the bootloader wont be able to find the partitions.
You could have posted the messages that it gave you here, we could have fixed the problem.

ANyway, your question. I havent used these myself but others will vouch for them
Fedora
SuSE

If you are wiling to do some configuration yourself (read - not afraid of command line and text editors)
Debian
Gentoo
Arch
Slackware

All the distros out there are very good. There is no such thing as a more ''durable" linux - unless you count seLinux which is a modification but isnt Durable in the sense you want
You fscked up your Linuxes.

Yep, If it wasnt obvious! Post the probs and let us help!!!!

If you'd like a durable distribution I'd recommend Mandrakelinux.

The one thing I consider really important when playing with Linux on your primary desktop is patience. If you don't know how to do something or something doesnt work right - rather than just fiddle until you break it - share your problem and invite others to share what they know...

Just my AUD 0.02 (USD 0.0140)

That is an excelent point.

When you want to dual boot with windows, you need to partition your harddrive first, then install windows, then install linux. Other wise your bootloader get's borked and life get's hard.

There's simple solutions for all theother problems if you search the boards and ask specific questions.

I remember when I first got into Linux, I was always breaking it, and now Mandy has been really stable. She is so good to me.

read the first line in my sig, and you'll know my response

it's not much different than any of the ones already posted.

dito

we can't help, if you don't ask

"Linux doesn't break, I break Linux."
yea...I know that...I'm not really blaming mandy...well, ok, I am...lol...I didn't know XP screwed with the partitions...but still, windoze always says the seconds harddrive doesn't exist...how can it mess with the partitions on it???

I'm just sick of having to reinstall every weekend! And, this is the first time it's been something I've done with windoze. I installed win98 and it didn't cause any problems with mandrake. I go from 10.0 to 9.2 and it doesn't work...I have to open up my comp, pull the plug on the cd drive and switch install CDs halfway through to get it to work for some reason...then I try to add a second install of it on my first hard drive and it screws up the bootloader...I fix that but it says something about 'try passing init='...so I reinstall w/o formatting, so hopefully I can keep my data. That somehow sets the permissions of all the config files, and ONLY the config files in my /home to root only. To top it all off, Konqueror's 'apply changes to subfolders and files' doesn't seem to work so I have to fix 'em one folder at a time...AURGH!!!

Is the second harddrive all linux?

If that is the case, that's why Windows can't see it. Windows can't read the Linux file systems.

Topic moved to Installing MDK

Hello All, first time poster.
I recently read that with Widoze XP boot with the CD and use the recovery console and type:
fixmbr
I will look for this again and post the link for the full story, but I know that fdisk /mbr does not work with XP

edit:
This is where I got the info from:
http://linuxiso.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17725

the fixmbr will undo lilo. destroy lilo. it will restore the hard drive to the windows default. dont use fixmbr unless you want to undo lilo.

mdk does have a rescue mode in the first cd. select that, then repair (whatever its called) lilo. also make a boot disk. this way if you should (for some insane reason) decide to install windows again, you can still get into linux via the boot disk, then repair lilo. planning ahead is your best friend.

If you install XP, it will overwrite the MBR. Simply solution, just boot off of CD1 of Mandrake, hit F1, type rescue, and from the menu, reinstall LILO.

When you install XP, it asks which partition to install into. If you select the wrong one, well "oh well!"..

While I understand your feelings here, here's a tip... "It's not rocket science!". What I mean by this is you just don't know stuff. XP and Linux develop with little regard for each other so if you are going to mix them, then you have to know stuff. Once you know/understand this, you realize its not too complicated.. But you can't afford to get angry about it because then you are not enjoying your hobby anymore

XP *will* screw with the bootloader, but lilo is easily restored with the first MDK cd following the steps cannonfodder gave.

If you are looking for another distro to try out, I found fedora to be quite easy to setup and maintain, with tools such as up2date and its apt and yum reposotrie access makes it easy to find things.

Stop screwing with it if you dont want to reinstall.

You are breaking it, not linux.


And dont ever do an upgrade, they are risky.

All Windows versions, and, I think MS-DOS, overwrite the MBR. I install lilo/grub to the root superblock (first sector of root partition aka /boot). I use System Commander Personal Edition (comes with Partition Commander) as my boot manager. This way I have no problems after re-installing Windows. Fortunately, I don't have XP.

I reinstalled windows xp on a dual-boot-setup of a friend(xp and linux). I tscrewed up the bootloader good. Nothing would even start any more. Could only boot from cd and floppy. I didn't get a chance to repair it (I tried it, but I first had to look up some info sinc ethis was teh first tilme I encountered this prolem ...heart about it ?? But they took it out of my hands ...), although fixmbr didn't seem to work ..mayeb I did domething wrong ... But my next step was trying fixmbr, fixboot again and then using maybe freedos of win 98-boot disk if you hav it and do fdisk /mbr (or something) or format /mbr. They took it to someone else .. (shop or man), but it seems he just said they needed a new harddrive. I know the harddrive was still intact ...but the mbr was screwed up and I can't believe you can't restore your mbr or clean everything of the harddisk and reinstall everything again.
Reinstalling lilo wouldn't work.

Personal: I really wanted to try to repair it...since the man had the pc for a week and was away to an other country during a period of that week, I certainly wanted to try it ..., but ok ...they have a new harddrive now.

I would appreciate it if anyone could write a good how-to an how installing windows after linux will screw your up your mbr ...really low-level if possible and how to repair it (most important). I think this is an important issue ...

I would say a low level format, but, notebooks have special partitions on them. The Low level format utility is from the manufacturer of the HDD. It writes ASCII Zeroes to the entire HDD, and you will lose all data. The bigger the HDD, the longer it will take. This is a last resort to attempt to restore your HDD(s) to functionality.

Hey, I relize now it was my mistake, etc...etc... I just got really frustrated...sorry
Anyways, anyone know of any way I can prevent this from happening again? Like, I think I can fix it on my own...I'm gonna reinstall and just not format the home partition, and if that doesn't work, I'll just backup and go to 10.0...I got more RAM, and now have 320MB, so I think 10.0 should run ok now. What I want to know though is any way that I can mess with other distros on my windoze hard drive without the risk of screwing up mandrake....AKA, so way it won't mess with the other hard drive or the bootloader in any way. If it screws with the hard drive it's on however, I don't care, because it's windoze, I only use it for games anways (which I do a lot more now that I can actually run them with my new RAM chip) :-P

Get System Commander or Partition Commander, which comes with System Commander Personal Edition. Then install the Linux Boot Loader into the first sector of the Root partition.

Then, if you have to re-install Windows, just install SC or SCPE again, and you are all set.

SC/SCPE does not require a special partition (unlike Boot Magic. at least the one that came with Partition Magic 3.0).

SCPE cannot boot from a Logical partion in an extended partition, while SC can. Both, in the current version, can boot from ext2, ext3, and ReiserFS.

I use Partition Commander to handle my partitioning, and use SCPE as my boot manager. I have no problems, and no worries about the MBR getting screwed.