fuzzylizard

Everything should be fine. Just install the new card and you should be good to go. However, always a good idea to back things up, so go for it.

Well, I think I have solved part of my little mystery -- my windows 2000 hard drive just died. I was running a mem test last night and went to reboot this morning and had a few problems.

The drive posted and found the MBR with no problems, but when it tried to boot into windows the drive entered this little seek pattern and wouldn't leave. This would probably explain why a lot of the errors were write error instead of read errors.

Still running the mem tests though. But it definitely supports my thought that something more was wrong with the computer then just the ram. It also explains why Linux, which is on a second drive, was not affected.

Tried that and got way too confused. Though I would look for a recommendation instead to spead the process up.

Oh well, guess I gotta figure this one out on my own.

Changed the F/H

What is the F/H?

I have someone else helping with this problem as well, and their suggestion, or thought, is that is the power supply. This would lead to the ram slowly failing. It does make a lot of sense and was something I hadn't thought about.

Anyone know how to test a power supply?

Unfortunetly, I don't have another PC to test the ram in. Otherwise I would. I am going to try and test the ram individually in my computer to help further diagnose the problem though. If ram checks out fine in one slot and not in another, it may be the motherboard after all. (I think this makes logical sense) This is going to be a slow process though.

Hey,

I am looking for a good chess game. By good I mean preferably 3d, with move analysis, different levels -- beginner, intermediate, expert -- and some form of teaching aspect to it.

I have tried to look for chess games in the past and have become very confused. It seems that you can get a chess engine or a chess front end. Preferably I would like an all in one package.

Anyone know of any good programs?

Thanks

What do you think of Red Hat 8.0? And which do you prefer?

Yea, this is what I will be doing in a few days, but I am in the middle of exams right now and just don't have the time.

I haven't run memtest86 enough to get a good average, but with almost 14,000 errors, do I really have to :)

Ext2 is the native filesystem for Linux. Ext3 and ReiserFS are both journaling filesystems.

I strongly suggest setting up Mandrake with a journaling filesystem -- either ext3 or reiserfs. The reason for this is that if the power to computer is suddenly cut, etx2 will probably not survive, whereas the journaling filesystems will recover very well. They add a lot more security to your linux installation.

In terms of partitioning, yea, just use the tools provided on the Mandrake install disks and format the partitions you will be using as eithe ext3 or reiserfs.

You may be surprised how many files you may want to share. If you have any mp3 files on XP, you will need an FAT32 partition in order to access them. (a little aside)

Strong Suggestion: make sure that you check the md5sums of the ISOs before burning them. This ensure that you do not get corrupted downloads.

As far as I can tell, all the hardware should work. (Not completely sure of the sound card though)

As for partitioning, I would place Mandrake on the entire second partition instead of just part of it. But that is your call.

You should format the partition as either ext2, ext3, or my recommendation reiserfs. None of these have anything to do with fat32. This means that if you want to share data between linux and an ntfs drive, you will need to create an fat32 partition as both OSs can read this filesystem.

As for the bootloader, I use LILO and have never had any problems with it recognizing and properly configuring the dual boot. However, I have heard good things about grub as well.

Before you do an install, make sure you have an emergency rescue disk created for XP in case something goes wrong.

Good Luck.

Let's see, more details:

- cpu temp: not really sure how to check this from within either Linux or windows

- video problems: nothing out of the ordinary

- other: whenever I reboot windows I, almost, consistentantly get a memory error message saying that Apache can not write, or read, to a particular memory location. (I can't really remember) This gets more consistent the longer windows has been running. If I reboot within a few hours, I usually do not get the error

The last couple days, almost every other time I try to access a folder I would get an error message.

Memtest86 displayed ~14,000 errors seeming to start about the >250 meg range.

Linux shows absolutely no sign of any kind of problem.

If you are looking for more information, just ask and I can fill in more blanks.

Huh, did I miss something????

Let's see.

Red Hat 7.3 running Ximian Desktop soon to be upgraded to Mandrake 9.0 (Don't like what Red Hat has done with the desktop) dual boot with Windows 2000 for things like Photoshop and Dreamweaver (can't afford the Mac yet).

I also have a computer running FreeBSD soon to be upgraded(?) to smoothwall gpl to serve as a firewall/router. (486 with 16megs of ram)

And I am going to be installing Slackware 8.1 onto another computer -- p133 with 16 megs of ram.

And I have a 286 kicking around somewhere that is running DOS 5 (or something)

I think ABIT boards are picky about RAM, and I know Linux is too.

That is the really odd bit. Linux hasn't complained about the bad ram yet and I can't see any problems with it either. Only windows and memtest86 are complaining. As long as I run Linux -- Red Hat 7.3 -- the computer runs without a problem. I would have expected more problems with Linux then with windows.

I really don't understand what is going on here. I had a similiar problem about a year ago as well, replaced the ram and things seemed to settle down. Now, a year later, I am back in the same position.

RAM: there is more bad hardware on the market than you can imagine. Stick with RAM that uses Toshiba, goldstar, or name brand chips. Seamens, which is plentful and cheap, is a nightmare. Avoid brands that use Seamens chips. Their tolerance for good or bad chips is too wide to catch problematic issues. I once had a Soyo board that would not read any card with Seamens chips. Soyo told me to avoid Seamens! (duh!)

My question is though, if I get some bad ram, should it not be bad from the very beginning instead of slowly degrading over time? When I first installed the ram -- about 4 months ago -- everything was fine. It has only been in the last few days that things have gotten really bad.

Is this a sign of bad ram, or is this a sign of a larger problem with the computer? This is what I ultimately need to find out.

Nope, not really. If both OSs fail, then it is time to buy a new hard drive.

I don't really have any sites to suggest. Corrupted downloads are really just the luck of the draw and usually has nothing to do with the site you are downloading from.

Also make sure that you download the md5sum txt file and place it in the same directory as the ISOs.

For the md5sums, go here and download the md5sum.exe program

http://downloads.activestate.com/contrib/m...dows/md5sum.exe

Place it in the same directory as the ISOs and open up the command prompt, or DOS-prompt, navigate to the directory where the ISOs are and type in this command

>md5sum.exe -c md5sums.90

or whatever the name of the file containing the md5sums is.

This will produce a line in the command window telling whether each ISO failed or is OK. If all are OK, burn them to CD and install.

First guess would be a corrupted CD.

Did you download the ISOs from the web and did you do an md5sum to ensure they downloaded perfectly?

Because the stores that I will be buying the equipment at don't sell Gigabyte motherboards.

So, that leaves me with either Asus or Abit and since I am familiar with Abit, that is what I chose. However, I can probably be talked into an Abit board.

Hey,

I am being forced, by my computer, to upgrade its guts. (I am having massive memory erros -- ~14,000 reported running memtest86)

I am thinking of getting an AMD cpu and an ABIT motherboard. I am looking at the AMD XP 2100+ chip and either the Abit KD7-R, or the Abit KX7-333R, or the Abit AT7 board.

Each of those boards has onboard audio and beyond a simple recommendation of which new mother boards work the best with Mandrake, I am also wondering if Mandrake 9.0 will recognize the on-board audio? I have an SB-Live Value card (that works great) but if the on-board will work then I might just use it. (or I may just go out and buy an Audiogy board)

Anyway, here is what I really want to know:

1. Best Abit or Asus AMD board to buy?

2. Will Mandrake recognize on-board sound for;

- Abit KD&-R

- Abit KX7-333R

- Abit AT7

motherboards?

3. Which is better, the on-board audio of these boards or an SB-Live Value audio card?

One last final question; in a computer that is running all the time, what could cause ram to become corrupted? Mine is very quickly dieing. (rest in peace gentle ram :( )

Fair enough. Stupid question for Mandrake then -- does supermount work properly in 9.0?

So from your initial description, are you looking for games more along the lines of the Homeworld series -- real time strategy games in space?

Does it only work with native Linux CDs, or is it a music CD thing?

I would have to say one of the cheaper, and older, NVidia MX cards -- Geforce 2 MX 400 (or something like that). Definitely on the cheaper side and most Linux distros should recognize it out of the box and set it up correctly.

An argument against using any nvidia card is that Mandrake only has generic drivers for it. But as long as you are not doing any 3d stuff, the generic drivers will work fine.

Let's see. One 10 gig drive and another 40 gig drive, eh?!?

10 gig drive:

9 gigs - /

1 gig - /swap (this would depend on how much ram you have)

40 gig drive:

10 gigs - /home

5 gigs - /var or /www - for websites and such

5 gigs - /usr

10 gigs - /media

+ 10 gigs left blank

The 10 gigs left blank would be for future developments, unless you really need the space. It is easier to mount a new partition then to resize (shrink) existing ones. This would be left blank for such things as an NFS partition, a Samba partition, an FAT32 partition, etc.

(As I think about this more, this setup may change)

I booted my computer today and found the cpu going crazy. I tracked down the culprit program and found it what autorun. I killed the process and the cpu settled down. This is the first time this has happened.

So, my question is: what is autorun and what does it do?

System Specs: Red Hat 7.3 running Ximian Desktop but using KDE all the time. (very easy way to keep up to date with evolution)