payasam

BVC: Looks like I'll have to do an FDISK /MBR and go on from there. As it happens, the possibility of the processor's over-heating had occurred to me too. Evidence: repeated resets did no good, but leaving the machine switched off for 30 or 40 minutes breathed new life into it. Trouble is, the symptoms match just about every ailment that exists, including dandruff and baldness in infancy. You seriously think Mandriva is a mass poisoner?

From the beginning, Ixthusdan, I have been inclined to think that a corrupted Windows installation is the cause of all this. Scandisk does not run fully, Defrag does not run fully. In addition, often the screen goes black and everything freezes when I try to get into DOS, which is where I do nearly all my file handling work: copying, moving, re-naming, zipping and unzipping, etc. This is exactly why I began by asking how to disable LILO so that the Windows installation procedure could run. If this daily irritant lasts much longer, I shall simply format C:, re-install Windows, replace the few data files on C: -- and hope that the Mandrake installation will function again when I have put LILO back where it belongs. As for a worm, that is unlikely. I have a regularly updated AVG installed, in addition to which I use good old F-Prot for DOS.

OK, Durvish, you won't be quoted: but you're not alone in thinking of this possibility. Ixthusdan, I can use the CD-ROM for everything except installing Win 98 over itself. One of my first actions when this trouble began was to back up all that was likely to cause me trouble if lost. I can run installation programs in Windows. I don't use Internet Explorer, though I suspect you are thinking of adware and other evil stuff. As I said, Scarecrow, I use only a small part of the 40 GB, so to me it seems enormous; and the thing, which is not really so old, has run without trouble long enough to rule out BIOS problems. PMPatrick, I tried to test my RAM with exactly what you advise, but that too hung. The next step will be the power supply. Thanks very much for the information and the warning. I've begun to worry about the gasket of my pressure cooker, so I'll act fast.

Enormous, Scarecrow, a veritable behemoth: at least 40 GB seems like that to one who spent seven years on a 20 MB MFM. Only a quite small part of it is occupied, I might add.

No go, AussieJohn. I pulled out the single 128 MB memory stick, wiped it and swore at it, pushed it back in. Then started up and ran Defrag. Drive C: got done, as it has done earlier; but drive D: stopped at 98 per cent. The flying fragments stopped flying and the mouse pointer disappeared. I have a RAM testing program (Windows) which boots off a CD, but that stopped running after just a few seconds. No progress at all, and I had to switch off since CRT-ALT-DEL did not work, as usual. Devries, since I had my first boot device set to CD-ROM, I tried to boot off the Win 98 SE CD (though I cannot recall if it's bootable). Ended up, as before, in LILO. Then I booted off the Win start-up floppy and specified CD-ROM support. Got to the CD, ran SETUP.EXE. It did the initial checks but stopped at the licence screen. Didn't budge. Square One. Before taking in the hard drive for replacement or repair (it's still under warranty), I'd like to see if I can remove LILO and re-install Windows over itself. I can think of no way to remove LILO except though MDK; but I don't know how that might be done.

Hello, Devries. Trouble is, I can't get to install any part of Windows because LILO comes in the way. I've tried both the start-up disk method and the F8 method. AussieJohn, you may well be right. It did not occur to me to check my RAM, though I've had trouble with the thing in the past. Thanks.

My system runs Win 98 SE and MDK 10.1 OE with LILO. For some ten days now, it has been giving me enormous trouble. It hangs, always in Windows, and then refuses to boot either into Windows or into Linux. When finally it boots, always into Linux, after a dozen or twenty resets, or more quickly after the power has been turned off and then on again, it runs all right in Windows too until the next time it hangs. In Windows, Scandisk generally hangs when incomplete; and Defrag *always* hangs. I have run the utility Hutil, made by Samsung for drives of its own manufacture, and that too has hung. One possibility is that there is something wrong with my Windows installation; although the fact that MDK too does not boot for some while points to a difficulty with hardware. I have tried to over-write Windows over itself, something I have done in the past when that was the only OS I used, but LILO comes in the way. Is there any means of disabling LILO, repairing the Windows installation, and then re-enabling LILO? On Windows I have C: and D:, and on MDK there are three partitions.

For whatever reason, when trying to use urpmi I have so far only gone around in sort of concentric circles. The Gimp 2.2 problem was easily solved, though it took some searching. I used both gimp and libgimp from a Dutch site which I reached through pbone. Working fine. The earlier version installed had to be removed, of course.

Ah, it seems that my attempt to install Gimp 2.2.4 (after removing the earlier one already installed) failed because I didn't do the libgimp thing. Will try again. MDK 10.1 OE.

Eternal rest, Devries, eternal.

I went to the Sane link, Devries, but found nothing that I could understand except that the Umax Astraslim is unsupported.

Thanks, Devries. I trust you are well. I did look in Sane some months back, but my Astraslim model was not to be found. In the link you give, the word "unsupported" terrifies me. But I don't think you'd set me running after wild geese, and maybe the thing has been added.

I've been wondering for some while if I should move to Mandriva. Installing 10.0 and then 10.1 was straightforward. Founts ("fonts" in Yankese) were much easier to copy from Windows into 10.0, though I may well have been stupid when I did it in 10.1. Applications were easy to install in 10.1 and now run without trouble, although for some reason I haven't been able to install Koffice (which I don't really need but wanted to look at). My chief difficulty has been that my scanner, a Umax Astra Slim 600, has not run with any version of Mandrake. The Umax people don't answer, and their site seems not to know of anything called Linux. It is a USB device, and what I have read here about USB is discouraging.

Ah, Devries, nobody *should* need three (not four) -- but some jokers *do* need them *and* like to mess around too. I have this ultra-neat system, you see: apples in one basket, fish in one bucket, and so on. Anyhow, I looked into Kmail again and saw that the trick was in the filtering. I now have all messages moved to the "download later" category and do what I want with them there. Not Netscape web mail, though. Thanks for the link, which I shall look at right away. [EDIT] The Gmail checker would've been wonderful, Devries, if Kmail hadn't done the job already. Now, if only I can find something for <GRRR> Netscape web mail.

Devries, Kmail seems to be a regular mail program. That I do not need, since I am well fixed with Thunderbird, Sylpheed Claws and Netscape Mail. What I'm after is something which will tell me what's at the server and allow me to delete, right there, what I do not wish to download. I saw that Kmail does SSL. Can there be an option or options I missed?

Will do, Devries. Thanks.

Yes, Devries, but it wants SSL and port 995.

KShowmail checks three POP3 accounts for me. It does not do Netscape web mail. Now that I have a Gmail account, I find that it does not do that either. In Winslows I use Mailwasher, which comfortably does the whole lot. Is there nothing of the sort which might be used in MDK 10.1? I've spent some time on Google without finding a thing.

When I tried to open your file in SO 7.2 (Product Update 4), it was recognised as a text file. When it opened, there were masses of junk characters, most of them the hash mark. For some reason I am unable to add the SXW conversion as an attachment. It is a single paragraph.

I'm on KDE, Adamw. It isn't really a problem -- I just *like* to grumble.

No, Adamw, I don't use Gnome -- I just happen to have read all of Jules Verne rather too long ago, and I find Nautilus the least cluttered of all the file submarines available in Mandrake. Devil's Pie sounds good. Juicy, I mean. I haven't so far built anything from source, just used RPM and TAR.GZ stuff. But I expect I can give it a shot. Thanks for the home page. If the thing does what you say it does, it should be pretty useful.

Coverup, with the help of Nautilus I managed to do as you said. Adamw, I don't need to follow your instructions now, but I shall jot them down for when I do need them. I'd like to thank you both. XPad now starts at boot-up, but it makes it rather too obvious that that's what it's doing. A little bright yellow blob shows up on the Kool Bloo splash screen. Most upsetting. I still don't know how to keep notes from taking up space in the taskbar, but I expect that's an XPad problem, not a Mandrake one.

Thanks, Coverup. Will try. But despite the years, I haven't got the hang of this GUI business, in any OS, and am comfortable only at the command prompt ("terminal" in Linux-speak?).

Have just installed XPad 1.1.3 on 10.1. Had it on 10.0 earlier. Even if I put in just two lines in a note ("pad"), its height remains three lines or more. Second, is there any way to keep it from showing up in the taskbar? My other problem is that I *still* do not know how to make programs start at boot-up. I assume there is something like the "Start-up" folder of Wingoes, only I haven't found it yet. Help appreciated.

Thanks, Coverup, but I meant mail-merge with an "e" prefixed. The same basic message sent to all addressees in a data base, with one or more fields in each record containing something specific to each addressee. Perhaps I should have said "mass mail". The 90 or so people on my list, all friends, call me a spammer when I send them goodies which they like.