First post.

After a seeminly successful Mandrake 10 install my system rebooted into XP. A reboot again and it does the same thing. I have been reading the FAQ's here and the posts in this "Installing Mandrake" section looking for answers. I tried the steps in this post http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=6389 but still no luck. Specificaly this step: "In the case where you reload windows, it'll write over the boot record and boot straight into win. Don't be afraid, linux isn't gone. You just boot off the first mandrake disk, press F2 and type rescue. One option is repair the bootloader/MBR. Done!"

Here are my spec's:

My first hard drive is and 80 digital western partitioned into a 25 gig C: with XP pro. then D: is another 20 gig empty NTFS partition. The rest is the linux partition and a 500MB swapfile. I used Partiton Magic 8 to make the linux partition and swap and the Mandrake install saw the linux partition and I used that for the install. There is also two 120 gig WD's in a RAID 0 array, fat32 G: drive for storage.

I'm still reading up on this and trying to learn how to use the command line but any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Sometimes Mandrake installer actually doesn't write the bootloader. In that case, even putting the first cd in and going to rescue mode won't help, since there will not be a /etc/lilo.conf to serve as a basis for the creation of your bootloader.

Easiest way: go into the installation process again, choose upgrade, then at the summary go through the bootloader part, in case of doubt not only let it put the bootloader onto the mbr of your first drive, but also on a floppy (choose /dev/fd0 as a target device) - that way, even if you reinstall windows and it kills off your lilo in the mbr, you can always boot with the floppy.

Greetings!

I am not clear on what exactly you have done. A bootloader, either lilo or grub, should be installed on the mbr. When you use rescue, you should have selected that step, that is, install lilo (or grub). This should be hda1, if the question comes up. hda1 is how linux identifies the first partition on your first boot drive.

Thanks I figured it out. I went to put the bootload on a floppy and it said that I should also have it on the mbr and listed what drives they were. There were hda and hdc both 111Gig??? hde was my 80 gig drive and so I skipped putting it on a floppy and selected hde and reboot and it works! Now a new problem. I have to goto Configuration / network / new connection every time I boot.

Also after playing with it for a while I did a restart and the system hung so I did a hard reset. When linux rebooted it did what looked like a filesystem check and loaded devices. They all got an ok except for my ethernet card. eth0:Realtek|RTL-8139. It's an oboard card. Any ideas on this one. I've done a few reboots and no more hands but still have to set up the network everytime. Thanks again!

Try this. When you restart, go to your normal screen. Launch a console. Type su, and then the root password. Then type "modprobe 8139too" (I think!) Then type "network stop" and then "network start". See if you are on. If that works, we will edit the correct file to load the correct module at boot time.

Ok console means the same as terminal window right? I am new to this as you can no doubt tell I did the "su" and entered the root password. "modprobe 8139too" and then "network stop" but I get the message: command not recognized "bash network stop"

Also after closing the terminal window no programs would start. The configure computer, web browser Terminal Program etc. They would start in the taskbar and the hourglass would spin for a few seconds but the programs wouldn't start. I am guessing I need to close the terminal session properly and not just hit the X to close?

Also after having to do some hard resets because things were getting messed up and a system freeze after trying to change the screen resolution I can no longer boot into windows. The "windows" and "windows2" entries I can select in the bootloader give me the "Invalid system disk, enter a new disk and press enter" and "a disk read error occured" messages

It's is after doing an unclean restart when linux is "checking for new hardware" that I can see everything is OK except for eth0 gets a fail.

A have a few more questions about installing firefox that I downloaded as well as my ati radeon drivers but that can wait. I am comitted to figuring this out and I appreciate your help greatly!