AussieJohn

A very warm welcome to MUB. I know you will like it here.

If you are installing 2001 then the problem is likely due to your sata hard drives because back then, sata drives were not around and so the necessary driver was not yet in the kernel.

I think you will find that if you install say Mandriva 2008.1 onwards you will be fine. Why not install the latest Mandriva 2010 ???.

Cheers. John.

Please disregard my advice. Due to your mistype of your os as 2001 and my not actually noticing your heading as 2010, my suggestion is irrelavent. JB

Thanks scarecrow and Greg.

I am finding that whether I try using Mandriva-2010 or PCLinuxOS-2009 live CDs I cannot get to a stage where I can select kernel Boot parameters. The dotted lines, or is it dashes, also shows up over the DELL intro logo so it appears to be before it even looks at the video driver info. In other words I think the initial bios activity is affected by the video cards condition. I am only surmising here.

I will try your suggestion booting into the installed Mandriva-2010-ONE and see if I have any luck there using the xdriver=vesa idea.

Greg. Thanks for the Welcome. Funny you should mention the Lobster. Was taken to another Family Christmas gathering party and someone had made a Lobster dish, Maine style and it was as great as I expected. I was more than partial to it since Aussie also produces some of the best Lobster in the world. :D .

Thanks to everyone for the warm Christmas greetings and the same to all of you.

Cheers. John.

Thanks sincerely to everyone.

It would seem that you generally agree with my assessment about the video card.

I had checked out the memory but that showed no errors (used Memtest.)

I truly suspect the memory on the video card so I think I will get a cheap nvidia card replacement since no one will be playing games on it.

Will post back later as to what ensues.

Cheers. John.

Just a bump.

Ideas, anyone ???.

Cheers. John.

I have installed Mandriva2010 on to a 5 years old Dell XPS containing an Nvidia Video card.

It is subject to intermittent freezing. When rebooting the initial boot screen shows rows of dotted lines and the numerous $ letters randomly scattered across the screen. When this occurs it will not fully boot past the point where the video driver cuts in and just sits there with a dark screen. On occasions when it does get past this point it presents a screen with a rainbow of coloured strips in a vertical plane and goes no further.

When I try the Safe mode to change xorg.conf from "nvidia" to just "nv" in case the driver is the problem, I find I cannot do so.

On the few occasions when the boot screen does not show the dotted lines and the $ signs all over the screen then the boot completes with no problems.

I seem to remember from the past that the $ signs and dotted lines and also the vertical multicoloured bands are an indication that the video card is on its way out.

Am I correct in this belief or is there another reason ???

Using a PCLinuxOS Live CD I have been able to gain access to xorg.conf and change it to "nv" successfully. I will see if the freezing stops.

When booting up PCLinuxOS, I have found also that if the dotted lines and $ signs appear all over the screen that it won't boot up properly either.

For this reason again I suspect the video card to be faulty but I stand to be corrected by more experienced people.

Help appreciated. Cheers. John.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

[Moved from Software - arctic]

The Mirror list problem has persisted for about 24 hours.

I feel certain that Mandriva has had a problem and not your system, I had the same problem for about 5 hours.

It maybe fixed by now so just give a try again.

Cheers. John.

I think it was a widespread problem.

Over the past 24 hours I had all sorts of trouble downloading from numerous sites in France, USA. Australia. These are in different Time Zones.

Then suddenly one came good. The Mandriva site wouldn't come up for ages.

So you were not on your own.

All the very best for Christmas.

Cheers. John.

I think that should be init 3.

I.E. a space between the t and the 3.

Cheers. John.

Hello Payasam.

Thanks , it is nice to see you are still around as well.

I am pleased to say I am hale, hearty and healthy still.

I am just under 3 weeks away from my visit to Maine , USA for 2 months to visit dear friends.

I am greatly looking forward to it. :D

I trust you have been OK as well.

Cheers to you and your family. John.

Just download it again and this time burn it at the SLOWEST speed possible.

Most disc corruptions have been blamed on fast burning of discs.

Even when I am burning simply data discs with music and Photos, I use the slowest speed possible. I don't believe this notion that everything has to be done as quickly as possible.

Cheers. John.

First of all and most importantly of all............Sincerest best wishes to your wife and a good resolution to her situation.

As far as I am aware, the mandrake online is meant to alert you to updates being available. A newer version is not regarded in the same sense as an update so I think is not presented here.

Your best and the most suggested advice is to do a clean install of the new Mandriva2010. I trust you already have the /home on a separate partition of its own so it should be fairly straight forward and quick.

Using the upgrade procedure is still a bit dicey these days even though great progress has been made over the years.

If you don't have a separate /home partition, then I suggest "biting the bullet" and, during the new install, create one this time. It may mean redoing all your settings again but in the future, any upgrades wont require you to fiddle with most of the settings again. Prior to doing all this I would go in to the user account and select show hidden files and look for .mozilla, .kde (and .kde4, if it exists. Since you are using 2009.1, it should be there) and save them to a usb memory stick if you have one. Upon completion of the new install, copy those two or three folders back into the same place as before. Click OK to override.

If you are not in a position to download the new 2010 iso then PM me and I will be happy to post you a DVD (at no cost).

Cheers and all the very best to your family. John.

I am currently running 2008-Spring, with everything up to date including latest Mandriva Firefox.

I have experienced Firefox induced system crashes. These occasionally occur when I leave the newly opened Firefox at the opening webpage for more than about between 10 to 20 seconds. When it crashes it goes in reboot mode of its own choosing. How ever that then requires me to reboot again because a number of applications such as sound, konqueror and whatever don't work properly. After the second reboot things run properly and normally again.

If I quickly open some other website after Firefox opens then it behaves and never crashes no matter what website or how long I spend at that website or on a page. No other application causes this crash and reboot problem. In fact I have never seen this "crash and self reboot" in Linux ever in the past. It is more like the sort of thing to be experienced in Windows. :-(

This has been happening for about 6 months through a number of Firefox updates. It is presently Mozilla/5.0. It does seem to be a Firefox bug.

Since I know how to easily avoid the problem, I haven't bothered to seek a remedy, here or elsewhere.

Cheers. John.

I think you will find that it should be "root" and NOT "boot".

It certainly has been on any liveCD I have seen and used.

Hope this helps.

Cheers. John.

I have experienced the same thing and all attempts to get past it were fruitless so gave up on it. (wasn't worth my time to chase an answer - 2008-Spring serves me well)

Am just curious about the possible solution since I see someone else has had the same problem.

Cheers. John.

Thanks Ian for the reference.

The application is Filelight and it is available in Mandriva repository.

An excellent and valuable tool. (with GUI interface.)

Cheers. John.

Sorry I didn't notice your edit hence the duplication. :-)

Just out of interest since you now have the Mandriva nvidia video drivers working AOK then why are you even bothering to still insist on trying to install the proprietary nvideo driver???. :huh:

It will do no more for you than the Mandriva one does.

In 2008.1-Spring and earlier (over past 3.5years and 7 Mandriva versions), I always successfully used the proprietary nvidia driver and always installed the devel kernel as well as the Headers. Never had any troubles installing it.

In 2009-Spring I have been using the Mandriva supplied driver only because it is now so easy to install.

Cheers. John.

Maybe the package you are looking for is .......unrar.

I install it everytime I do a new OS install.

It is in the Mandriva Repository.

Cheers. John.

Considering that the cmos battery is not recharged, if the Battery is quite old it could simply be on its lasts legs. After all they do not last forever. :)

They are dirt cheap anyway and it would do no harm to replace it.

Cheers. John.

Hello Neddie.

How long have you had the Laptop ?. If it is a fair while then it could be as simple as the fan, the air inlet and its filter being blocked by accumulated dust or the fan not running at full speed due to failing bearings.

Most overheating problems are caused by these two problems than any other.

Cheers. John

You may not need to reinstall it. If you delete the hidden K3B file in /home, then next time you activate K3B it will create a new one anyway. If the problem persists, I would then try the uninstall --> reinstall routine. Make sure you have the updates for it up to date because there were a number of bug fixes.

Cheers. John.

That is very handy to know Nexus. Never had the problem so I didn't learn that trick.

Cheers. John.

Hello Kdar.

Are you putting a space between the t and the 3 ??.

If you are and it is still not bringing up the text then I have no further suggestions to offer. Maybe some other member has an idea.

Cheers. John.

Hello KDAR.

I think you forgot that 9600 is higher than 6100 so of course yes that is the one to select.

As Isadora says that is the preferred method to use. When you become more familiar with Mandriva, i.e. Linux, then you can consider using the proprietary driver.

Reference the method that TUX mentioned, when you typed init 3 then enter, sure you got a black screen but up near the top left hand corner you would have seen some text.

You then type in root press enter and then your root password then enter again. You then need to type in ls /"where you have the nvidia driver located" (the actual location), press enter and you should see the located driver. Press the up arrow and you will see the same line you previously typed in, now modify it by changing only the ls to cd and press enter again. Now type in sh NVIDIA and press the tab button which will complete the driver title, again press enter and you will see the install procedure start. Select Yes all the way through and when it is completed, type in reboot.

Cheers. John.

You should try removing the memory sticks entirely and clean the contacts with a clean cotton cloth (do not use synthetic fabrics and do not touch the contacts with your fingers) wet with a little white spirit (pure alcohol or methylated spirits) and re inset them two or three times.

The contacts are very narrow and can lose connection just from vibration if not fully inserted the first time. Do NOT force the sticks in but be sure they are fully inserted and secure. This is possibly more likely than faulty memory, then do the memory test as suggested by the previous posters if my suggestion makes no difference.

Cheers. John.

Firstly, a warm welcome to MUB.

You say you managed to erase your bios while you were in Mandriva ???.

I don't think so. Other more experienced posters can correct me if I am wrong. I don't believe Mandriva was responsible for your problem at all.

Sure you can erase partitions by doing something incorrectly while in the OS or while installing an OS but usually you cannot do anything to the bios from an OS, you generally have to to enter the bios BEFORE booting into the OS ( except for programs designed especially for reflashing the bios which can be done with more recent modern motherboards).

I think you may have erased your MBR (Master Boot Record) instead which has nothing to do with the bios.

To restore the MBR, insert your CD or DVD you used to install the OS, reboot and use the Repair/Rescue as you reboot into the Rescue mode of the Disk. Select Restore MBR.

Cheers. John.