gatemaster

I redownloaded mandrake 10 and burned with NTI. Booted up from CD and is installing. so far it looks good. :D install went smooth as silk.

I finally got another machine setup to install linux. I made a floppy with cdrom image on it since it won't boot from cd. the floppy started the install then an error came up and said the cd did not appear tp be a mandrake install disk. I got that with the community 10 disk and the 9.2 disk. I guess I got a bad download or burn. I no longer have the iso's to try another burn and the 10 community version seems to be gone. I really wanted to see what mandrake was like.

10mhz, I have XP on a 40gb drive (primary ntfs IDE 1), the slave to that is a 60gb drive(ntfs) I use for storing various data. the 60gb drive had a 8gb partition(fat32) as a go between linux and xp. linux was installed on a 13.5 gb drive (slave IDE 2) with a liteon cd drive(primary IDE 2). like I said only the mandrake wouldn't boot from CDI figured I could put the boot image that goes on a floppy on the install CD and it should boot from there. I was thinking to disconnect the xp and storage drives to protect them from linux and then install man10, then I can reconnect the other drives and boot to linux with a floppy start disk. I guess it might be better if I move the 13.5 linux drive to the slave position on IDE 1 slot with the 40gb xp primary drive. what do you think? aussiejohn, you were right I did not defrag first, i forgot.

Thanks for your in put Aussiejohn, I did not notice the space, so that explains why it didn't do anything at all. When I installed it said that some partitions were not aligned properly. I used partition magic 8.2 and followed the instructions exactly as Jclosed gave them. It always causes an error on my storage drive which does not have an OS on it. I don't know why mandrake won't boot from the CD, fedora and linspire did. I use a Liteon 52-24-52 cdrw drive. I will try burning the install cd again with a different program. At this point I am only curious about linux and would like to check it out. I don't have any real complaints with XP and I get all my software for free. If I could afford to buy them I would, so I am not taking sales from companies that deserve to get paid for thier investment in producing them. I will give it a go again sometime soon. Cheers to you

I did everything as instructed. install went fine, but cd won't autoload in linux so I couldn't instll staroffice. I tested the install cd's which checked out fine. I installed the bootloader on a floppy only. But it totally screwed up my XP setup. I tried using a 98 bootdisk and typed fdisk/mbr but no luck. XP wouldn't load, instead I got disk error cant' read. I removed linux cuase I had to use that harddrive to load xp so I could access some files on my original xp drive. I then had to do a complete re-install of XP and all of my programs. I didn't see any compelling reason to switch to linux. more problems than I ever had with windows. Maybe when I pickup an older machine which is independent of my XP machine I will start over with linux. I do appreciate all of your help and patience.

I did not create any partition yet. My machine is latest technology I build them myself and upgrade constantly so old is not a problem. the floppy boot fix is fine no need to delve futher. I have not been able to get to the actual install yet. I have been doing several things at once. I will create a swap and ext3 and will let you know how it goes. I do appreciate all of your help.

I can't boot from either 10 or 9.2. I can boot from fedora core2 but it has other problems. I can also boot from linspire but it also had problems with lilo. I have PM 8 and it gave the option of formating and partitioning the 13.5 drive to ext 2 and ext 3. I have another 60gb drive I use for storage and it has a 5gb partition I could format to fat32 as a go between.

Aussijohn, your sequence makes sense, but I normally have no problem booting from cd with it set as first boot device. Jclosed, I made the boot floppy as instructed. I see that those files are not on the cd except in a folder, maybe that is why they were not being seen. when I make the partions do you suggest a size for each or will partition magic do that? I will be installing mandrake community 10 to a 13.5 hardrive exclusive for linux. I also have 9.2 if that is more stable or preffered for any reason. Your english is fine by the way.

Thanks Jclosed I will try that. I am leaving for fireworks with the family so it will be later when I get to it. One more question can you give me a simple procedure for adding the mandrake boot files to the XP bootloader for ease of use. I see a lot of problems on linux sites using grub and lilo with xp duelboot setups. Or would it be better to not install any linux bootloader and just boot from a floppy when I want to load linux? If the later is the best solution how would I make a floppy to boot(not install) from? Thanks

I have boot from cd as a reg. setting since I rarely use floppies. I have read in this and another forum till the words are getting blurry.

I have XP on my C drive and am trying to install either mandrake 10 or 9.2 on a seperate drive. the disk will not auto load while in xp, says can't find config file. when I click the ok button it brings up a splash screen with different labels. If I click on label 1 it asks if I would like to reboot, but computer just restarts back to xp. if I try to do a boot from the mandrake CD it does nothing and just then loads to xp. I need to maintain my xp setup for a while at least, so I would like to dualboot I have tried several different distros with no success other than extreme headaches. I am about to give up on linux I think that if the open source community would like to get more converts, they would make thier install and dualboot more user friendly. If my experience so far with linux is any indication of what I am heading to then I will have to accept windows with its issues since they are much less of a headache than linux. I did mange to install linspire but had too much trouble with lilo and fedora went in but it had trouble with identifing hardrives and was very difficult to get to boot into, I always had to do a partial reinstall to get it to load. I then went for Mandrake because I was told that it was the most user friedly for noob's to linux but am having even more grief with it. I don't want to have to reload XP every time a linux install srews up, and screws up my XP with it. I am still interested in linux