Hi there,

I'm having a very large problem installing Mandrake 10 Official. Whenever I start up the installation, it'll load the graphical installer fine, but whenever I click "Next" on the first screen (select language) it completely freezes up after about half a second - can't move the mouse, can't open the CD drive, nothing.

I've tried all of the following:
- Checking the ISO is right (MD5 checksums match)
- Installing from hard drive rather than CD
- Booting the installer with "noapic nolapic acpi=off"
- Using the 2.4 kernel installer ("alt1")

My system is...
Motherboard: Abit KR7A-RAID
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+
Graphics: GeForce 4 Ti 4200
RAM: 768 MB DDR RAM
Two hard drives on IDE1

I've also got an IDE controller card (a Maxtor one that uses the most common chipset, IIRC) to which is attached a third hard drive.

As I say, it always freezes at exactly the same point, rather than being random. I'm stumped. :( Can anyone shed some light?

Thanks!

I'd suspect either a bad burn or a problem with your controller card. You can eliminate the controller card by disconnecting the third hard drive from the card and the power to the drive and see if you still get the same freezing problem. If no change, then try reburning at a slower speed.

It's not a bad burn, as it doesn't work when I try to install it from the hard drive, either.

I'll try disconnecting the HD from the controller card, although Fedora Core 1 installs fine with the controller card, and Mdk10 install still hangs when I use the 2.4 kernel to install, like I said.

You might even remove the controller presuming its a PCI one.

However freezing in the same place is GOOD.... its when it appears random its a pig to fix!

I gotta give it you though.... you done pretty much what anyone would or could have dome so far.

Remember the install kernel is different, you might (and probably) will be able to put the controller back once its installed, even if you have to make a special kernel to do it!

It's not the controller card. I completely removed it, and I still get it freezing at exactly the same point.

This is really annoying. I can't think of anything else "non-standard" about my system... anyone got any more ideas? :(

Have you tried
since taking the controller out ???

Have you got another PC with 2GB free ???

It might be worth trying a network install.....
My 64 bit shuttle locked up about the same place on the CD detetion (even though it was booting from it) and installed perfectly from http....

Surely, if it wouldn't do it from the hard drive then it won't do a network install, either?

I've had the installer freeze on me while using an USB mouse. Usually, while moving the mouse or clicking. You might want to try with a PS/2 mouse, of course if that is the case.

Surely, if it wouldn't do it from the hard drive then it won't do a network install, either?

Dunno. I found it was something when it probed the IDE at the same time as using it... i had a spare PC where Id downloaded the ISO's so I just mounted them under the /var/www//html directory and then pointed the network install at it...

it worked for me .... but somedude is not the only person who had probs with the USB mouse either!

sorry I think it might be suck and see time.... however if you did all the stuff in your first post on your own then you sound pretty competent

(welcome to the board btw)


dont get me wrong well all help all we can but my guess is youll do something like try a PS2 mouse and viola....
remember post back.....

Forgot another basic thing to look at which you may have already done - check your bios setup and make sure plug 'n play is turned off. Having it turned on can cause all kinds of problems.

Aha, the problem has been resolved! It was my USB mouse. Dug out an old PS/2 mouse and the install worked like a charm.

Well, not so much of a charm, as I got the lovely 'bootloader-not-working' bug that others seem to have. I boot up, and get the word "GRUB" with a blinking cursor just sitting there. (I can't fathom why it would give me Grub, since I chose LILO in the installer.)

Anyway, managed to get around that and boot into Win XP by doing the old 'fdisk /mbr' with the help of a win 98 boot disk. Now I'm going to try and get Win XP's bootloader to load up Linux (modifying boot.ini and soforth).

It never rains, but it pours.

-- EDIT --

Okay, well, I booted into Mandrake by fiddling with the BIOS boot order, and it turns out that the install was botched anyway. It wouldn't mount either my FAT32 partition or my NTFS partitions, the network connection couldn't be loaded, the mouse didn't work, it gave tons of errors on bootup about missing some files... I give up. :(