davidw55

Thanks for the advice guys, and the links. I read the article and even though the problems that were mentioned are an issue, they do not apply to my particular situation. I am confident that all will be well if I can just find my **** Mandrake CD's run rescue and reinstall the bootloader. Thanks again, and wish me luck! David

I had a 60GB drive with WinME and Mandrake 9.1 installed using LILO. The drive was starting to fail so I got a new 200GB Seagate and proceeded to use Ghost to backup the disk to an external drive. After installing the new drive, I booted with the Ghost boot disk and restored the entire disk to the new drive (Win FAT32 partition and 3 Linux partitions). When I try to boot however with the new drive, all I get it 99 99 99 99 .... I don't know that much about Linux yet but I am guessing that it's the dual boot loader that's the problem, since the MBR is seeing different size partitions, etc. How can I restore the Ghost image to the new drive and get it back the way it was and booting properly? I have looked for my Mandrake 9.1 CDs but haven't found them yet? Is there anything I can do to fix this without them? Any help would be appreciated, thanks... David

BTW, I forgot to mention that I was logged in with root access when I used the file manager. When you click on either the floppy or cd-rom in fm it displays the following: file:/mnt/cdrom doesn't seem to exist anymore Here is a screenshot of the error: Hope this helps... Thanks... David

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried the terminal command first. Only thing it gave me was input/output error. So, then I changed the line in fstab, guess that was a mistake, because after I did, the little cd-rom icon on the desktop went away, and when I use a file manager to look into mnt it still lists the floppy and cd-rom but the file type for both says "locked directory." Seems as though the one line for the cd-rom affected the floppy too, is this possible? Any other advice would be welcome, since neither of these devices are working now. David

johnnyv, Thanks a LOT! That did the trick. For some reason when Linux was installed evidently it set it to audigy instead of emu10k. As for the fstab file here are its contents: /dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1 none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0 /dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2 none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/hdc,fs=auto,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0 none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0 Obviously, I don't understand all (or most) of this yet, but the none by the cdrom looks kind of suspect. Could that be the problem? Thanks again! David

I am very new to Linux, so I am not sure what I need to change to get my CD-ROM and Sound working in 9.1 (I am assuming it does not matter which desktop env. you are using, I have been using both KDE and GNOME). In the Mandrake Control Center, it has setup the devices and recognizes that I have a Creative SB Live! Value (CT4780) Sound Card, and a SAMSUNG CD-ROM SC-148F (48x CD-ROM). However, anytime I try to access the CD-ROM it looks like it tries to poll the floppy instead in either the file manager or in a browse window. I am guessing I need to change a configuration file somewhere to get this working. Likewise, I cannot get any sound to come out of my Harmon/Kardon speakers. I am running a Dell Dimension 8100 1.4Ghz, 256MB RAM, Maxtor 60GB HD (Dual Boot). Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks... David

I haven't been able to find a driver anywhere for my Lexmark X63 (it's an all in one printer, scanner, copier, fax). I went to Lexmarks support site and they have NO linux driver available. However, I figured it used the same printer engine as other Lexmarks, so I looked on the cartridge box and noticed that it was the same for the Z51 - Z53, so I setup the printer as a Z53 and it seems to be able to mimic a Z53 well enough to at least print from the applications that I have tried (so far). Doubt I will be able to take advantage of the other functions of the device under Linux though :( :( David

Thanks, after searching I found another post that provided detailed instructions on how to boot to command line mode and enter the text version of mousedrake or whatever it was and got the mouse working again... David

Well, Great News, sort of... I went and installed and used the expert mode under partitioning and resized my dos/win partition down to 46 GB and then did an autoallocate for linux of the free space. Then I just adjusted a bit on root, home, and swap sizes and everything went fine with the install. After playing around in 9.1 for awhile and setting up my desktop, I rebooted and chose windows (not knowing if it preserved the partition properly) but ME started just fine and everything is where it should be!!! I was so relieved, since we still need ME for a few things right now. I played around with mozzila, etc. and found out it configured my internet automatically, which was nice, since I am running a cable modem. Now for the "sort of" part. I did a dumb thing and changed the mouse in control center from ps/2 to ms-intellimouse and after I rebooted back into Linux no mouse. Can you tell this dumb newbie how to get my mouse configured back to ps/2 again (since control center doesn't seem to work from the keyboard). I am assuming I will have to enter a command line type of function to get it fixed. The other thing is I have found that Lexmark sucks for Linux support. You would think with what IBM is doing with supporting Linux that their printers would too... I am going to try to find another Lexmark in one of the print server options that my X63 can mimic, so we'll see. Is going to be a real bummer if I can't use at least the print part of the all-in-one under Linux Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks... David

I have used it successfully as well, just been a while since I have done fairly low level stuff, and didn't know if DOS fdisk would even be able to create partitions that Linux would recognize, but now I know that it will. I'm hoping that since I did a scandisk and speedisk to get all my data nice and neatly contiguous that when I let the Mandrake util. resize my DOS partition that I won't loose anything :roll: Oh well, I do have the Ghost backup, etc. if anything goes wrong... Since all I had on the drive was dos windows yes it was all allocated, don't know how Mandrake came up with 248MB for a linux partition though, seems kind of stupid the way it tried to go about it. I'm just going to go ahead and take my chances with the Mandrake util. and see how it works. Thanks, I've just been playing around more with it lately and redesigning it to be easier to navigate. Trying to get more into PHP, etc. until I can find a new position (laid off a few months ago). Thanks for the tips guys, and how dare you hijack my thread!!! You know how seriously we take security these days... Just kidding David

OK, I have to admit I am a complete newbie to Linux (although the command line syntax looks a lot like DOS that I have used since the '80s :) ). I used to love running OS/2 (for the stability) and I am hoping Linux can be MY new OS/2 so to speak. I'm really tired of Windows, and have vowed not to run XP for several reasons. I went ahead and ordered a standard 9.1 for $5.99 to avoid the hassle of creating my own, especially since it's likely I would do something wrong in the process. I have a Dell Dimension 8100 1.4Ghz, 256MB RAM, with a 60GB HD, of which about 22 is currently used. I also have an external 120GB USB that I use for doing Ghost backups and storing other offline data. I have read several of the topics in the forum and while I have seen a few that had similarities to my situation, I didn't really see one that addressed my questions, so here goes. First, (not thinking) I went to install 9.1 on my 60GB drive with WindowsME, and after I created a boot disk, and started the install, by the time I got to the Packages selection, I didn't realize that Mandrake had already created a Linux partition and swap partition. Only problem was the Linux partition was only 248 MB in size! That's not even enough to run Knome or KDE, soooo, I killed the install and deleted the two partitions. It had been awhile since I had done fdisk type stuff so I decided I would do a full Ghost backup to my 120 GB drive before going any further. I also decided I would read the help, faqs, etc. on the forun before doing anything else. I would like to install 9.1 on my 60 GB drive and have it co-exist with the current ME installation, but I have seen several threads that worried me about doing something like that. I know Windows should not complain since it is already installed, etc. and I know Mandrake can exist anywhere on the disk, but I am not sure if it is safe to use something like fdisk to resize my current primary partition (i.e. reduce it from the whole disk to around 40 GB, leaving 20 GB for Linux on another partition). I have also seen threads that say you should have dedicated partitions for various directories off of the root in Linux. Is this necessary? Keep in mind, I am not going to be doing anything terribly serious with Linux right now. I just want to get it installed and use it regularly for Internet, Office applications, etc. to eval. it and see if I should stay with it. I have run scandisk and Norton SD on the drive so all of the data existing on the Primary partition should now be contiguous. Will resizing my primary to free up space for Linux trash my current ME install? Do I need to get the latest copy of Partition Magic to do this safely, or something like the Ranish Manager? I downloaded the Ranish program, but am not sure if that is the route I need to go. Sorry for the long (1st) post, but if anyone has wisdom on what my next steps should be, I would greatly appreciate it. David